Indian Popular Fiction

New Genres, Novel Spaces

Indian Popular Fiction
New Genres, Novel Spaces

Editors
Prem Kumari Srivastava
Mona Sinha

Foreword
Tabish Khair
First published 2022
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 To
the ‘one’ with the ‘many’ in all of us
 Contents
Foreword: Popular, Pulp, Proustian by Tabish Khair 9
Acknowledgements 15
Introduction: Kitsch? Is It…? 19
I
Dismantling Hierarchies
1. ‘Popular’ and ‘Classic’: Deconstructing the Categories 41
Ruchi Nagpal
2. Literary Fiction as Popular Fiction: Reading Jhumpa 53
Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies
Deblina Rout
3. Betwixt and Between: Giving the Middle Its Due 70
Ojasvi Kala
II
Romancing the Celluloid
4. Bhojpuri Leisure: Popularity, Profanity and Piracy 87
Gautam Choubey
5. Feluda’s Serialised and Celluloid Selves: A Tale of 100
Literariness and Patrilineal Legacies
Arunabha Bose
6. The Popular ‘Dexter’: Its Heirs and Impact on 114
Indian Media
Neha Singh
8 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

III
(Discoursing) Politics of the Popular
7. Graphic Novels and Delhi: Contested Spaces 133
in the Popular
Sangeeta Mittal
8. Political Exceptions and the Imperatives of Popular 156
Dissent: A Reading of I.S. Jauhar’s 1978 Emergency
Spoof Nasbandi
Anupama Jaidev Karir
9. Woman and Statecraft: Reading Meenakshi Reddy 173
Madhavan’s Novels in the Series ‘Girls of the
Mahabharata’
Indrani Das Gupta and Shashi Prava Tigga
IV
Moving Beyond: Social Media and New Spaces
10. Interrogating Social Media and Romance: The Case 195
of Durjoy Datta
Aisha Qadry
11. India’s Tryst with Flash Fiction: A Terribly Tiny Tale 208
Rachit Raj and Pranjali Gupta
12. Online Writer and the New Age Popular 222
Prachi Sharma
Contributors 237
Index 243
 Foreword
Popular, Pulp, Proustian
Tabish Khair

As the subtitle of this very necessary and enabling anthology, Indian

Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces indicates, the ‘novel’ in
English carries reverberations that are sometimes missing in other
European languages, where the genre-name (‘roman’) unearths its
own medieval roots in romances, while newness is associated with
the short story (‘nouvelle’). In English, however, the genre is ‘new’
by name; it is ‘novel.’ Hence, the subtitle—“New Genres, Novel
Spaces”—not only highlights this interplay of the new and the old
across generic definitions, but also brings in other—newer—genres,
including popular ones.
How does one negotiate the popular in literature? Surely not as
‘vulgar’, which Gautam Choubey, quoting the always-illuminating
Raymond Williams, rightly notes in this book. There is a need to
go beyond glib oppositions, such as that between high and low
(vulgar) culture, or between ‘pulp’ and ‘literary’ fiction, but without
lowering intellectual and critical standards. Actually, I would argue
that the way to raise critical standards is to go beyond glib binaries
like literary/pulp, high/low, art/popular, etc. That, finally, is the
justification for an anthology like this one.
Let us take the opposition between ‘pulp’ and ‘literary.’ As I
have noted in various papers, in quantitative terms, ‘pulp’ denotes
10 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

cheaply published fiction aimed at the mass market. In this sense,

its roots go back to the decline of the circulating library in late
nineteenth-century Europe, when the popularity of circulating
and serialised novels (like those of Charles Dickens) gradually
metamorphosed into shorter single volumes—particularly of such
genre fiction as the detective novel and science fiction—meant to
be sold to individual buyers. This tendency was reinforced in the
early twentieth century by the rise of the mass culture of industrial
printing, radio and cinema, as well as the increasing popularity
of older revivified genres like the romance and gothic horror.
In qualitative terms, ‘pulp fiction’ often stands for either “bad
literature” or literature with a simple narrative, written in an easily
accessible style. Of course, both the assumptions are problematic:
the narrative of George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) is more
accessible than that of most detective and science fiction novels
and one could fill an entire book with the titles of works published
or read as ‘pulp’ at one time and ‘literary’ at another. Moreover,
if one looks at publishing lists today, one will notice that many
‘pulp’ novels sell much less than successful ‘literary’ novels. Both
the quantitative and qualitative registers laid out in this paragraph
seem to be insufficient.
In short, pulp fiction is not necessarily ‘bad’ literature, even if
it does not set out to be consciously ‘literary’; pulp fiction may not
be completely derivative, but it tends to follow generic ‘formulas’;1
pulp fiction may not be read by even a hundred people, but it
intends to attract as many members of a linguistic community as
possible; pulp fiction does not need to have simple narratives, but
it is fiction whose primary concern is the activity of narration, in
the basic sense of Midnight’s Children ignored “listener” Padma’s
much-scorned “what-happened-nextism”.2 But, again, all these are
qualifications rather than definitions. And the only definition one
can offer of pulp fiction has to be qualified by the knowledge that,
at times, it can extend to literary fiction as well: pulp fiction is fiction
that uses largely fixed generic features to satisfy the largely fixed reading
expectations of as large a market as possible.
However, this also means that a work of fiction can slip
 Foreword 11

from being seen as ‘pulp’ to ‘literary’ by a drastic revaluation of

generic features and reader expectations. For instance, a great work
of ‘genre’ fiction—as is the case with the best science fiction by
Phillip K. Dick—can push the markers of the genre in such new
and pressing ways that it can, in effect, qualify as literary fiction. If
that is so, then, one can argue that a ‘literary novel’ that does not
challenge the fixed generic features of the ‘literary novel’—and these
get fixed in certain ages and coteries too—is essentially pulp, and a
‘pulp novel’ that exceeds the generic limits of its pulp category can
be literary.
If one thus decentres the relationship between ‘pulp’ and
‘literary,’ then one automatically looks at the ‘popular’ with fresh
eyes. The popular has often been celebrated in the past too—in
terms of the ‘people’ (both ‘proletariat’ and ‘nation’) or in terms
of the market (‘bestsellers,’ ‘hit films’, etc.). It has been read in
the light of the historical, sociological, economic and political—all
of which are relevant aspects. It has less often been read in terms
of the literary qua literary or the artistic qua artistic, which, as I
outline above and develop below, can also be done.
This anthology sets out to look at various popular and novel
genres, not just print ones but also filmic and digital ones. What
unites all these genres is the story. That is also what—in different
ways—unites the ‘literary’ with ‘pulp’, and underlines the reason why
nothing can be dismissed (or celebrated) just for being ‘popular.’ It
would be a rash critic—and, I would say, a prejudiced reader—who
would say that Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot is less in terms
of the art of the story than William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. What I
mean by ‘story’ here is not necessarily the same as what marketing
executives might mean. In order to understand that—and recognise
the reason to avoid dismissing works in terms of popularity (or lack
of popularity)—we need to think about what we do with a story.
Say the word ‘thinking,’ and the image evoked is that of abstract
ideas, facts, numbers and data. But what if I say that this is our first
and most common error about the nature of thinking? As religions
have always known, human thinking is conducted primarily in
stories, not facts or numbers. Human beings might be the only
12 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

living animals that can think in stories. Facts and information of

some sort exist for a deer and a wolf too, but fiction, and thinking
in fiction?
Now, stories are celebrated for many things: as repositories of
folk knowledge or accumulated wisdom, as relief from the human
condition, as entertainment, as enabling some cognitivist processes,
even as the best way to get yourself and your children to fall asleep!
But all this misses the main point about stories: they are the most
common, most pervasive and perhaps even the oldest way for
humans to think.
Having missed this point, we then proceed to reduce stories—
and their most complex enunciation, literature—to much less than
what they are or should be. For instance, a good story is not just
a narrative. It does not simply take us from point A to point Z,
with perhaps an easy moral appended. Religious fundamentalists
who see stories only in those terms end up destroying the essence
of their religions.
Let us take one example: the Book of Job. The fundamentalist
reading of the Book of Job stresses Job’s faith. In this version, the
story is simple: Job is a prosperous, God-fearing man, and God is
very proud of him. Satan, however, argues that Job is such a good
man only because God has been kind to him. Give him adversity
and you will see his faith waver, says Satan. God allows Satan to
test Job, by depriving him of prosperity, family, health, etc. But
Job’s faith does not waver, and finally all is restored to him. The
fundamentalist reading—which reduces the story to a narrative—is
simple: this is a parable about true faith.
To leave the Book of Job there is to stop thinking about it.
Because the narrative of Job is connected to its problematic. One
can even argue that the narrative resolution is misleading: in the
restoration of Job’s children, health and wealth we have a resolution
that fails in our terms. We do not expect such miracles in real life.
Hence, it is not the narrative resolution of Job that is significant.
What is significant and useful are the problems of the story.
For instance, when the righteous, believing Job is afflicted with
death and suffering, such questions are raised (in the story and by
 Foreword 13

Job’s friends): Do the innocent suffer? Why do the innocent suffer?

Who is to be blamed? Is God unjust or uncaring? Has Job sinned
in hiding (or ignorance) and is therefore being punished? Does it
all make any sense?
Job adopts a difficult position throughout the story: among
other things, he neither blames God, nor does he blame himself,
but he demands an answer. When one thinks of this, one comes
to the kernel of the thought of this story: how does one live best
in a world where undeserved suffering sometimes befalls the good?
It is not the unbelievable narrative that makes this a significant
story; it is the way Job’s reactions, his friends’ prescriptions and the
problematic of the entire story make us think. Moreover, as God’s
incomplete and unsatisfactory ‘answers’ to Job indicate, stories can
leave us thinking in very complex ways.
Religions have always known that human beings think best
and most easily in stories. That is why religions consciously think
through stories: the ‘facts’ and ‘details’ of these stories change
with changing human circumstances, but what does not change
is the bid and ability to make us contemplate, imagine, reason,
induce, examine—in other words, think. Hence, any fundamentalist
reading of the stories that form a religion are by definition a way
of destroying the best in that religion.
Strangely, politicians have also known this. All major political
movements have depended on the power of stories. In the decades
when the left was on the ascendency, it had a powerful story to tell—
of human exploitation, human resistance and eventually human
achievement in the shape of a ‘classless’ society. In recent years, the
right has managed to tell us stories that, for various reasons, seem
more convincing to many: inevitable state-aided neoliberalism,
economic development as progress, etc. Modi’s victory in India,
Erdogan’s in Turkey and Trump’s in USA—all three are driven by
powerful narratives that explain the ‘past’ and promise a ‘future.’
Unfortunately, the one area where thinking in stories was taken
seriously—and not just reduced to mechanistic explanations—has
lost confidence in itself. The Humanities have been too busy trying
to justify stories in all possible terms—entertainment, discourse,
14 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

narratology, cognitivist structures, reader response, Darwinism,

etc.—instead of working on how to best think in stories. The total
failure of academics, publishers and editors to talk of literature as
literature—not just what sells, or a set of ‘reader responses’, or a
soporific, or passing politics, etc.—is an index of this failure.
The so-called post-truth society is not primarily the result of
our inability to focus on facts; it is due to our failure to read stories
deeply. Just as there are ways in which facts can be used positively
or negatively, there are ways in which stories can be read—to make
us think or to prevent us from thinking. Literature—even in the
days when it was written with a capital ‘L’—was the one area of the
Humanities where this was a serious endeavour. This has changed
at great cost to human civilisation.
Humans still think primarily in stories, in literature (pulp or
literary), in films, TV serial, digital games, etc. But the failure of
standards in education and literary criticism has combined with the
rise of fundamentalism (which is not piety or religious thought),
scientism (which is not science) and numerical neoliberalism
(which is not even capitalism) to deprive more and more people of
the ability to think critically, deeply and sensitively in stories. An
anthology like this one, led ably by Prem Kumari Srivastava and
Mona Sinha, Associate Professors at Maharaja Agrasen College,
University of Delhi, India, I would hope, will not just provide
documentary service, which is necessary enough, but also lead to a
conversation about the way we can really think in the Humanities.
It is a conversation that can save the world.

Notes
1. Patrick Parrinder says as much about science fiction, and quotes
John Cawelti, in Adventure, Mystery and Romance (1976) as
highlighting the “formulaic quality” of “popular fiction” as a
distinguishing marker. See Parrinder, Science Fiction: Its Criticism
and Teaching, London and New York: Methuen, 1980, p. 44.
2. See also, Scott McCracken, Pulp: Reading Popular Fiction,
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.
 Acknowledgements
It is only fitting that we begin a book that foregrounds collaboration
and labour by acknowledging the intellectual intent of the various
avatars that this book took before this journey and the support
of numerous friends, and family members who traversed with us.
The earliest avatar of this book was the national seminar
on Indian Popular Fiction organised in January 2018 by the
Department of English at Maharaja Agrasen College. Gitanjali
Chawla, the convenor needs to be acknowledged for the clear
objective of the seminar. Her insistence on the Indian element in
IPF established the playing field. Prem, as Co-convenor was statedly
unapologetic about the legitimacy to be accorded to pulp and pop
in academic space. In all, the concept of the seminar celebrated the
kitsch and the marketplace!
In the post seminar afterlife that this project took, it would
only be befitting to thank the team of foursome that we were,
Prem and Mona with Gitanjali and Sangeeta that steered this
project forward. With more than 30 well-researched papers on our
table, one book project was not emerging as a viable proposition.
Eventually, the project branched off into two and today we have two
independent yet interdependent books on Indian popular fiction
at hand. Another important element that governed the branching
off was the emergence of a new site in this expansive field of Indian
Popular Fiction which was experimenting with new genres, novel
spaces, experimental approaches and bold themes, which eventually
has become the theme of this book.
16 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

So, in its present avatar, we are beholden to the eminent

writers, academics, critics and publishers who opened their minds
and hearts and shared their stories, weaving a rich tapestry of
experiences and ideas during the seminar. To begin with, one is
indebted to all of them—from the doyen of Hindi crime fiction, Sri
Surender Mohan Pathak to Advaita Kala, the pioneer of chick-lit
in India, graphic novelist Vishwajyoti Ghosh, significant writers
of today, Devapriya Roy and Karan Verma, veteran award winning
writer of children’s fiction, Deepa Aggarwal, writer and academic
Anuradha Marwah, emerging historical fiction writer, Neeraj
Srivastava; stalwarts from the publishing industry—Karthika V.K.
from Westland, Mansi Subramaniam of Penguin Random House
and Aditi Maheshwari-Goyal of Vani Prakashan; and especially
our friends, colleagues and academics, Prof. Simi Malhotra of
Jamia Millia Islamia and Prof. Raj Kumar from the Department
of English, University of Delhi, who have stood like pillars of
support through all our endeavours. We are indeed indebted to
Prof Raj Kumar and Devapriya Roy in particular to have written
incisive comments for the book cover. Additionally, the young
promising author, Karan Verma deserves praise for acceding to
Ojasvi’s request for an interview.
The scores of participants and paper presenters brought unique
and contemporary perspectives to the deliberations at the seminar,
several of which have been included in this collection of critical
essays that we have to offer. We thank Ruchi, Deblina, Ojasvi,
Arunabha, Neha, Aisha, Rachit, Pranjali and Prachi for their
patience and their trust in us, as well as for their cooperation during
the various stages of revision spread over the last so many months.
We are especially grateful to our colleagues, Sangeeta Mittal, Anu
Jaidev, Indrani Das Gupta, Shashi Tigga and also Gautam Choubey
for their enthusiastic participation in our vision and chipping in
with their invaluable contributions.
Above all, we would like to place on record our deepest
appreciation for our dear friend Tabish Khair, renowned writer,
novelist, critic and Professor of English at Aarhus University,
Denmark for his prompt commitment to write the insightful
 Acknowledgements 17

foreword to this book, taking time out of his very busy schedule.
We cherish his friendship and warmth. We believe that the foreword
itself sets up a significant perspective for any future academic work
on Indian popular and commercial fiction.
Our sincerest thanks are also due to our long-time friend,
Mr. K.K. Saxena of Aakar Books who believed in our vision and
agreed to publish this book. His guidance through the various
stages has been invaluable.
And lastly, we feel blessed to have the strength of our families
firmly standing right behind us. Our spouses—Amit and Rohit
respectively, and the shining stars of our lives, Alakh, Umang,
Akshar, Ami and Tanaya have been our emotional anchors all
through. It is especially pertinent to mention that this book has
taken its shape during the troubling and anxious times of the
global pandemic, keeping us all engaged and focused.
We hope to have made a small contribution to the myriad
understandings of the mutative, kinetic and discommode field of
Indian Popular Commercial Fiction.
Prem and Mona
 Introduction
Kitsch? Is It…?
Prem Kumari Srivastava & Mona Sinha

The Indian English popular fiction needs no introduction. Neither

does it demand an explication. What best it necessitates are newer
debates and novel spaces to rest in. Contemporaneous it is, but what
it further entails are reflective readings, thoughtful deliberations
and scholarly examinations. Though the high priestesses and
pundits of the kitsch and the popular couldn’t care less, but their
champions claim that it needs this kind of a fulcrum to rest on.
There is a fresh breed of popular fiction authors, there are unusual
spaces that they traverse, there are innovative genres that are being
explored and most importantly, there is a collapse of parameters
that govern these writings and different yardsticks that measure it.
Needless to say, popular is always associated with the young, so this
anthology is addressed to the youth and carries a lot of young mind
in it. For the old, it is food for thought: understandings about
different genres and writings, experimental approaches, inspired
reader-response theories, and legitimate social media spaces. With
this predatory note (for some), this collection of essays hopes to
open up spaces that are exciting to enter and considerations that
generate innovative thought and enduring discourses.
This anthology takes off from where we left in early 2019 while
concluding the two-day Interdisciplinary National Conference:
20 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

“Indian Popular Fiction: Redefining the Canon” which celebrated

‘the Other,’ the ‘Counter Culture, the literary subaltern, the
majority culture, the lowbrow as against the highbrow, kitsch
versus taste, and public enterprise vis-a-vis private enterprise.
And in this process, this conference interrogated literature, para-
literature, sub-literature, the commercial, the market, what sells and
why and who is writing for whom and why. The conference, which
had begun with a promise, a commitment towards furthering the
quintessential dimensionality of the 1980 Edward Said’s discourse
of the ‘Centre Margin Paradigm,’ deliberated on the concept of the
one and the other; talked about the opening up of literary spaces
and narratives, a disbanding of boundaries, toppling of hierarchies
and a dismantling of categories.
Its climactic Valedictory Session was ruled by the overarching
discussion point, ‘What Sells and Why?’ and the lead debaters
were the two major stakeholders of the pop fiction discourse, the
‘publishers’ and ‘commissioning editors’ who make it happen,
and the scholars, or voices from the arena of academics and
pedagogy, who critique this very process from the vantage point of
the supposed maker and creator of taste. They threw light on the
pedagogical implications of teaching and handling these popular
texts, the intricacies and theoretical underpinnings attached to this
genre fiction, and the academic care that needs to be given to these
texts. They discussed and talked about taking Indian popular fiction
to the classroom, its interface with globalisation and liberalisation
and its identity in the wake of rising cosmopolitanism.
Nonetheless, without these two, the additional two vital
investors who also occupied the stage for two full days prior to the
valedictory in multiple sessions of the conference—the numerous
famed creator-authors belonging to the Indian Renaissance of
Popular fiction writing, such as the pundit of Hindi pulp crime
fiction, popularly called SMP, Surender Mohan Pathak (1940-) well
known for his more than 300 novels of the Sunil, Sudhir and Vimal
series which have found a new readership and interest after their
translation into English; Advaita Kala, the queen of Indian chick
lit whose debut novel Almost Single (2007), sold over 150,000 copies
 Introduction 21

in India alone; Indian graphic novelist and cartoonist Vishwajyoti

Ghosh, (Delhi Calm, 2010 and stories about the legacy of partition,
This Side and That Side: Restorying Partition, 2013); Devapriya Roy of
the Heat and Dust Project (2015) and Indira (2018) fame, National
Bestselling author of the novel Jack and Master—A Tale of Friendship,
Passion and Glory (2014) and Dhruv (2020), Karan Verma; the
raconteur of Children’s stories, Deepa Agarwal; Delhi University’s
Anuradha Marwah—(Idol Love 1999) and Dirty Picture (2007); and
Neeraj Srivastava, whose debut novel, Daggers of Treason (2016) a
historical fiction on the life and reign of Emperor Khurram Shah
Jahan which won eight international book awards—and their readers,
had already discussed and debated the pop art and its consumptive
process. So, on the stage were the guests of the valedictory session,
Manasi Subramaniam, Senior Commissioning Editor, Penguin
Random House, Aditi Maheshwari-Goyal, Director-Copyrights
and Translation, Vani Prakashan and Head of Publishing at
Westland, Karthika V.K. In addition, there was Prof. Raj Kumar,
Head, Department of English, University of Delhi and Prof. Simi
Malhotra, Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, who set
out the agenda, which is largely the thematic of this anthology too.
Without taking any ambivalent positionalities, the agenda, then
and the agenda now, is thus set. Just as COVID-19 has brought us
face to face with sharp divides and structural inequality at multiple
levels, similarly, discussions of Indian Popular Fiction uncover a
hiatus between literature that ‘matters’ and one that supposedly
doesn’t. So, without any utopian blinkers, the publishers and the
acquisition/commissioning editors set out an agenda that collectively
denied literary merit as the only deciding factor while publishing a
book. According to them, commercial success and sales were more
vital than anything else. Having published Shobha De, the prima
donna socialite of cosmopolitan Metro fiction, Anita Nair, Anuja
Chauhan, Manu Joseph, Hartosh Singh Bal, Rana Dasgupta, S.
Hussain Zaidi, Sarnath Banerjee, Amruta Patil, Karthika Nair, the
IIT Professor Amitabha Bagchi and Booker-Prize winner Aravind
Adiga among others, these publishing doyens claimed that in India,
the turn of the 21st century has witnessed the first generation of
22 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

English reading public in the true sense. Till date, English Fiction
in India was read by a select few, the privileged convent educated
elite gentry. The 1980s and its aftermath has witnessed a new breed
of readership constituency that enjoys easy, unaffected English.
They are not so much concerned about the level of English with its
symbolic and metaphorical idiomatic language use as much as its
content that is truly desi. Interestingly, the readers and writers are
from the same page and are on the same page: hailing from India’s
mofussil towns; in terms of themes, language, culture, history,
myths and grammar, they traverse together. They reiterated that
publishers have understood the above ground reality. Publishers
are gatekeepers who function on instincts, quick responses and
their risk-taking abilities.
It is a truism echoed by both the publishers and authors that
the sale of a book has no relation with its reviews. Often it is
seen that good reviews do not always fetch popularity and lucre. A
greater truth is that good books sometimes do not sell. Interestingly,
the academia is suspicious of anything that sells. Years ago, Leslie
Fiedler, the Jewish intellectual of America had said that academia
has set it out for us to believe that there is an obverse relationship
between literary merit and marketplace (Srivastava, 2014, 164). The
pertinent questions raised were,
– What and who generates taste: people, the academia or the
gatekeepers? Is it a marker of class?
– Can taste be created/ manufactured/ craftily generated?
– How seriously can the public taste be taken?
– Is there the politics of the canon?
Thus, the concluding remarks become the prefatory note to
our introduction, which has almost automatically and naturally
panned out in four sections. Section I, “Looking Inwards” takes an
unabashed look at the rich legacy of the Indian storytelling tradition
with the vernacular making its own significant contribution to the
reading spirit. Section II, “West? Where?” makes a tall but maybe
a just claim about the rejection of the Western nod of approval by
the Indian Popular Commercial Fiction (IPCF) writers. For, isn’t it
 Introduction 23

true that even the holy trinity of Indian English Fiction—Raja Rao,
R.K. Narayan, and Mulk Raj Anand—had European godfathers in
Graham Greene and the like to back them up? In the present age,
IPCF writers do not have any such gurus; in fact, the reliance on self
is quite high. Section III, “Write Moves” focusses on the benefits
and opportunities that the present digital age offers to these young
writers and how they make complete use of its platforms such as
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and the like. Section IV
provides a note on the structure of this anthology: divided into
four parts with three chapters each. This section also presents the
rationale for the inclusion of a particular piece of writing.

I
Looking Inwards
English in India has had a colonial history and nearly two centuries
after its official induction in the country (thanks to Macaulay), now,
more than ever before has entered an aspirational phase. Debates
over the status and presence of English in the Indian sphere have
raged since 1961, simultaneously with the anti-Hindi campaign
in Tamil Nadu and other southern states. The sentiment against
Hindi as a national language rears its political head from time to
time [the most recent provocation being the National Education
Policy1 (NEP 2020)], ensuring the continued relevance of English
in such a scenario.
Nevertheless, this is also true that English has borne with it
a badge of elitism, its access available only to the well-off classes
who could afford this kind of education. For decades English
has maintained its stature as the language of access and success.
However, the processes of globalisation and economic liberalisation
that began in the early 1990s have ensured steady expansion in the
middle class demographic of India which has harnessed English
language skills to ride on its aspirations2. The debate now has
shifted to whether the process of indigenisation and the variety
of English that is spoken in India makes it an Indian language,
since unlike other regional languages in India, it has no specific
regional or cultural roots. In fact, the latter aspect frees the English
24 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

language from the stranglehold of any hierarchical order or

hegemonic control that other long-serving Indian languages might
be subject to. A strong case is being made today to consider English
as a native language and not as a colonial imposition since it has
become a part of the Indian ethos, having been around for three
hundred years and is the second most widely spoken language in
the country after Hindustani (Singh, 2020). Although it is still
not included as an Indian language in the Eighth Schedule of the
Constitution, Sahitya Akademi had added English to its awardee
languages as early as 1960 (R.K. Narayan’s Guide being the first
winner) and the Bharatiya Jnanpith brought English into its fold
when Amitav Ghosh won the prestigious national award in 2018.
While one view supports Raja Rao’s contention that English
cannot be the “language of our emotional make-up” and suggests
that several English writings are only an “inadequate translation of
a native experience” (Bhardwaj, 2020), the other acknowledges that
over the decades English writing from the native point of view has
acquired a ‘vernacular life’3. It is interesting to note that each of the
regional languages in its own way, has contributed to the process of
indigenisation of English in India as it is spoken in as many ways
as there are native inflections and cultural milieus. And then there
are also several voices which bat for English to be designated as the
national language. In the words of Manu Joseph, “English is the de
facto national language of India. It is the bitter truth” (2011).
The phenomenal commercial success of popular novels in
English such as those of Chetan Bhagat and Amish Tripathi clearly
indicates that a new class of readers has emerged and that English
has moved from being elitist to democratic in terms of the sheer
scale of their sales. “In which other language does any book sell so
many copies?” asks Harish Trivedi, pointing to the fact that writers
like R.K. Narayan, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth and Arundhati
Roy never enjoyed this kind of commercial success. (Sinha and
Shahnaaz, 2016, p. 35). However, the democratisation of English has
also led to an acceptance of an inevitable change in the quality of
language being used in mass-based popular literature. Trivedi terms
this as a kind of “lumpenisation” and “vulgarisation” of English,
 Introduction 25

the latter, in its etymological sense, also meaning “common”.

He suggests that, “it is in that sense we have to acknowledge that
English has become an Indian language” (p. 35). This view finds
an echo in Tabish Khair who points out that English is becoming
the language of the middle classes “also through pulp literature”
(Westergaard, 2018, para 13). One might infer that the popularity
and sales of commercial fiction in English not only provide an
insight into the development and vast outreach of a language that
can no longer be considered a mere remnant of a colonial past,
but also offer a glimpse into the very dynamic evolution of a new
reading public.

II
West! Where?
IPCF is concerned with everything local and homegrown: from
markets to consumers, to themes, to ideas, and people. Unlike their
serious senior elders of literary fiction in the pre-1991 liberalisation
era—the big brothers Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh and
Upamanyu Chatterjee, to name a few who also won international
prizes and global readership constituencies—these writers of the
IPCF seem unidirectional and inward focused. For several of them,
the Western nod of approval is inconsequential. Their fictions
often occupy non-hegemonic locations, their characters emerge
from non-urban centres and the setting is far from everything that
carries the metropolitan paraphernalia or Western import. Ravinder
Singh, a software professional at Infosys who hails from Burla,
Sambalpur, Odisha in his first novel I too Had a Love Story (2008),
writes his own story of lost love and longing about his girlfriend
who died in 2007 before they could even be formally engaged to
be married. N.R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman Emeritus of Infosys
Technologies while reviewing the book found it simple in theme
and honest in rendition.
A literary canon often functions as both repository and
confirmation of literariness. This is also true that establishing,
maintaining and building the canon has become, for better or
worse, one of the chief functions of academia and academics. Years
26 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

ago, in the academic corridors of the academia at Delhi University,

in a seminar on women’s studies and a session on Indian popular
fiction women writers, an innocent young scholar asked a seasoned
feminist scholar on the status of Shobha De, the then raging queen
of pulp fiction. Pat came the reply, “Shobha De? She is already
in the dustbin.” But a presumable breakthrough is found in the
current popular commercial fiction tradition, an opening up of
new insights, and creation of a kind of a meta-canon without
limits, forever changing, challenging the established authority and
subverting the status quo in an act of non-conformity. These popular
books may not be consigned to the holy library shelves today but
their fate may not be different from many of their predecessors,
who were born popular and turned classic later. Section IV of this
introduction provides an extended discussion of this strand.

III
Write Moves4
Section 3, somewhat mischievously titled “Write Moves”, engages
in a quarrel less discussion on all the novel and innovative ideas
that make the contemporary Indian Commercial Popular Fiction.
The internet age, at the close of the 20th century, has brought us
technology that has unleashed powerful opportunities that are now
ripening into a “sphere of unbridled creativity and communication”
(DiMaggio, 2014). On a daily basis, we spend most of our active
hours consumed by hundreds of text messages, blogs, Facebook
feeds, Instagram, Twitter and a plethora of apps which determine
how and what we communicate in the digital age. There is also an
overwhelming amount to consume, leading to the rapidly shrinking
attention span of the reader. But the written word gets to hold its
place on the web since, regardless of technology, it is words people
turn to for expressing the human condition.
‘Online activism’ has gained currency with young writers who
build social media circles and engage in meaningful conversations
about topical and socially relevant issues with their readers. One of
the contributors to this anthology gives the example of Harnidh
Kaur, who hails from Mumbai. Harnidh’s Instagram account is
 Introduction 27

replete with political statements about the present age woman, her
condition and position in society. An unabashed forerunner of the
Me-Too movement, her poetry deals with issues of sexual violence,
love and heartbreak.
On the same register exists a ‘Free information ecosystem’
which in many ways, has opened the gates of learning and literature
for all. If this was not enough, ‘Innovative Promotional Activities’
are attracting attention of another kind. Mobile Literature Festivals
are becoming a buzz word. In October 2012, six writers decided to
journey through India and mingle with scholars, readers, literature
enthusiasts from five cities in Southern India. This first-such roving
writers’ festival received help from Asialink Writing Programme of
Melbourne University. Popularly called ‘Bookwallah’ it received
support and participation of three Indian writers—poet-novelist
Sudeep Sen, emerging writer Chandrahas Choudhury and fiction
writer Annie Zaidi—and three Australian writers: Michelle De
Kretser, Kirsty Murray and Benjamin Law. Thus, what we see is
that the creative spheres of art, music, design and literature, have
all been impacted by the technological affordances provided by the
internet and modern-day innovative spaciality.

IV
Sections
Sections are led by cohorts and each cohort presents a view working
towards the wholesomeness of the volume. Theoretical frameworks
are provided where the subject matter is new and unexplored.
Today, the popular discourse and the debates surrounding it need
no theorising. They are well planted and firmly grounded. So the
first three chapters in Section I, “Dismantling Hierarchies” at the
head of this anthology defy any neat theorising yet provide answers
to certain basic questions related to the binaries that exist in the
hierarchy of literature and culture; popular and classic, popular
literary fiction and popular commercial fiction.
The opening chapter, “‘Popular’ and ‘Classic’: Deconstructing
the Categories” by Ruchi Nagpal, delves into the oft considered
debate on dominant literary culture: the English literature as an
28 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

intellectual discipline and the ‘significant other’—popular literature

or ‘paraliterature’. For an enthusiast of the ‘popular’ and its fiction,
she writes, understandings of these two simple yet complex binaries
are important entry points to bigger discourses on a related register.
When one probes into the idea of classic and what the word and
concept entails, one finds that the categories seem to be shifting
and intermingling. Problematic or assuring as it may sound, the
categories of popular and classic are the constructs of a discourse
that bars the ‘other’ and entertains the one in a more compelling
manner. The category and the term, thus, stand contested and this
paper looks at the terms ‘popular’ and ‘classic’ and then probes
deeper into the idea of ‘popular classics’ and the postmodern
manifestations of it.
Chapter 2 by Deblina Rout, ‘Literary Fiction as Popular
Fiction: Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies’ is a
natural corollary to the debate ably tackled by Ruchi Nagpal in
Chapter 1. Through a detailed discussion of the motifs of loss and
belonging; lived realities of Indians and Indian Americans; the
emerging urban middle class fraught with flaws, caught between
their roots and the “New World”; cultures of ordinary individuals
in transition echoing the ethos of dislocation and the fragility
of emotional bonding and hopes for a promising tomorrow, the
stories of this Pulitzer Prize and the Hemingway Foundation/
PEN Award winning collection, are adorned with stunning prose,
which neither lingers unnecessarily nor is tight enough to demand
heavy intellectual investment. Thus, the stories are written for the
layman, in his language. The characters echo the flesh and blood
dilemmas of the readers, reflecting the flavour of popular fiction.
Yet, the literary value of the book cannot be underestimated. These
statistics show how the canon of popular literature is not utterly
irrelevant and can be moulded to cater to both mass society and
high culture. Thus, the aim of the paper, rightfully contended by
Deblina, is to address the book as popular fiction mingled with
literary merit. Not really antipodal to literary fictions of the likes
of Jhumpa Lahiri, commercial market-driven fiction often offer a
warm genuflection of sorts.
 Introduction 29

The third offering in this section, “Betwixt and Between: Giving

the Middle Its Due” by Ojasvi Kala is a quirky but a significant
opinion piece on hierarchies in literature and fiction. The chapter
builds its premise on a discourse around a family with three siblings,
a la M.K. Naik style, one of the earliest critical voices of Indian
writing in English. In his essay, ‘Indian Pride and Indian Prejudice:
Reflections on the Relationship Between Regional Indian Literatures
and Indian Writing in English,’5 Naik writes that Indian literature
written in several languages is a vast joint family blessed with many
brothers, the youngest being Indian English literature, born with
a hideous birthmark, which unlike the black mark of Flory, the
hero of George Orwell’s Burmese Days, is white. He further proposes
that this gives rise to a strange notion that the young fellow is a
bastard. Forty years earlier, such a proposition went down well with
the regionalists but obviously does not hold much water today.
Interpreting IPCF as the middle child of the literary family and
crawling out from the dark crevices of negligence, Ojasvi makes a
case for IPCF, which now demands its dues. Towards the end, she
has tried to answer the question, whether real distinctions can truly
exist, or whether the true nobility of literature lies in its blurred
lines and undefined worlds.
Much like the key features that embrace the scientific
compound celluloid, Section II “Romancing the Celluloid” brings
three critical pieces that research the elasticity around literature and
the various contours it takes when dealing with the aural and visual
medium. This section looks at the visual turn that this century
has witnessed which was further accentuated in India by the rise
of literary adaptations of popular writings on celluloid. The set of
three essays that this section presents, analyse the visual practices
and ideologies that characterise the transition from print to screen.
While dwelling on the resurgence of the vernacular as a significant
contributor to the overall popularity of IPCF, Gautam Choubey in
“Bhojpuri Leisure: Popularity, Profanity and Piracy” brings to us
the cultural strength of Bhojpuri, the fastest growing language in
the world (Devy, August 4, 2017). Yet over the past decade, there
has been a sharp decline in literary output from the region, asserts
30 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Choubey. Giving a list of factual reasons that support this, Gautam

insists that one must mull over at length on the post-80s Bhojpuri
popular entertainment industry, the economy of Bhojpuri leisure
and liberalisation of the Indian economy, leading the now
emboldened, historically impoverished Bhojpuri speakers to spend
a little on entertainment. Against this backdrop, Gautam chooses
to provide a few new notes on the constitution of the popular in
Bhojpuri and attempts to recast the very idea of ‘the popular’ in
the context of Bhojpuri. Combative in its drift, as the author calls
it, the chapter proposes to speculate on the challenges inherent in
projects that seek to explore the domain of mass entertainment.
Choubey ends with a plea to reconfigure the positionality of the
popular in Bhojpuri where it lacks local high culture referents or
elite patrons.
Close on its heels, the fifth chapter, “Feluda’s Serialised and
Celluloid Selves: A Tale of Literariness and Patrilineal Legacies” by
Arunabha Bose, sees Feluda, the eponymous Bengali detective, as
a doppelganger of Satyajit Ray himself. Ray’s suave and debonair
detective has both Bengali and English antecedents: Nihar Ranjan
Gupta’s fictional detective, the hyper-masculine and anglicised
Kiriti Roy, who comes closest to being a colonialized replica of
Holmes and a cultural variation on the hard-boiled detective,
Narayan Sanyal’s Sherlock Hebo, a decolonised parody of Conan
Doyle’s hero and of course, Saradindu Bandyopadhyay’s Byomkesh
Bakshi.
Bose traces Feluda’s literary ancestry to Premendra Mitra’s
Ghanada, a gifted raconteur with a prodigious ability to spin
yarn customised to satisfy a Bengali readership and entertain an
audience exclusively composed of young boys. Mitra’s unique
generic fusion of the bhromon kahini (travel writing) with rohosyo­
romancho (mystery and thriller) form a seminal influence on
the generic evolution of the Feluda series. Yet Bose states that
Feluda’s chief literary antecedent has to be Sherlock Holmes with
his unmatchable precocious ability to retrospectively reconstruct
personalities and his unchanging status of an eternal bachelor, the
creation of a forbearing model of male virtuousness for the middle
 Introduction 31

class Bengali boy to emulate. The chapter also explores how male
homosociality in the exclusively Bhadralok adventurism of Feluda
is reinforced by the cultural ecosphere in which the stories unfold.
The final chapter in this section, “The Popular ‘Dexter’: Its
Heirs and Impact on Indian Media” by Neha Singh, carries out a
close analysis of the popular American show “Dexter”, with special
focus on its nuanced representation of the figure of the serial killer.
The analysis of the show is simultaneously informed by a study of
the manner in which it depicts select aspects, namely morality and
violence. Further, the chapter explores the possible Indian heirs of
“Dexter”, basing this analysis on media content that has represented
the contentious figure of the serial killer. In accordance with the
study of select contemporary Indian crime shows on streaming
platforms, the chapter concludes with the possible impact of shows
such as “Dexter” on contemporary Indian media content.
This brings us to Section III, titled “(Discoursing) Politics of
the Popular” which seeks to situate the politics within the realm of
the popular. In Chapter 7, “Graphic Novels and Delhi: Contested
Spaces in the Popular” Sangeeta Mittal explores the rich history
of its evolution as well as an equally resonant body of theory and
praxis. According to Sangeeta, the Graphic Novel enjoys intriguing
intersectionality with comics, fanfiction, fantasy, sci-fi, folklore,
life-writing, journalism, historical fiction, pedagogical tools, films,
and the complexity of both the medium and the subject gets further
aggravated when the spatial form of the Graphic Novel responds
to the urban space of postmodern Delhi. Sangeeta’s analysis of
Sarnath Banerjee’s Corridor (2004) and Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s Delhi
Calm (2010) guide us through the urban squalor of postmodern
Delhi with ‘graphic’ eloquence and vividness with their non-heroes
dealing with issues like migration, livelihoods, crime, quacks, and
human rights.
Stepping further into this discussion, Anupama Jaidev
Karir in Chapter 8, “Political Exceptions and the Imperatives of
Popular Dissent: A Reading of I.S. Jauhar’s 1978 Emergency Spoof
Nasbandi” attempts to read I.S. Jauhar’s acerbic Hindi language film
Nasbandi as an important intervention in the popular discourse
32 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

in the aftermath of the Indian Emergency of 1975. Through the

instance of this film, Anupama makes us explore the ways in which
the space of the popular imaginary becomes the site of popular
resistance and how popular cinematic narratives help articulate the
sense of shared struggles and commit them to collective public
memory. Anupama contends that one cannot over emphasise the
significance of popular cinema as a measure of evaluating political
exceptions and mass resistance movements. The chapter deftly
presents the thesis that popular cinema is a crucial barometer of
general public sentiment since it is the very space where narratives
of the political imaginary get variously and relentlessly imagined,
enacted and consolidated.
Indrani Das Gupta and Shashi Tigga’s Chapter 9 in Section 3,
“Woman and Statecraft: Reading Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan’s
Novels in the Series ‘Girls of the Mahabharata” is a contrafactual
telling of narratives which fall in the category of what Tabish
Khair calls ‘literary speculative fiction’ (Westergaard, 2018). Such
narratives approach myths with a slant; in the present case, that
of gender and politics. As a point of reference, the Indian epic
Mahabharata, with its many fluid layers and interpretations, has
often been borrowed and adapted into several languages and stories
to redefine the political and cultural intonations of a historical
milieu through the centuries. This research imaginatively explores
the lives of Satyawati (The One Who Swam with the Fishes, 2017), the
first matriarch of the Kuru dynasty, and Amba (The One Who Had
Two Lives, 2018), the first rebel who sought to persevere for her
identity to the extent of being reborn, within the intricate world of
the cacophonous voices of statecraft, patriarchal values, sexualised
identity and desires.
Section IV, “Moving Beyond: Social Media and New Spaces,”
deals with contemporariness and spaces that inhabit it. Aisha
Qadry’s Chapter 10, ‘Interrogating Social Media and Romance:
The Case of Durjoy Datta’ examines the success story of Datta as a
best-selling modern romance fiction writer and the role played by
social media in ensuring that success. Datta’s case sets a template
for contemporary writers whose social media presence catapults
 Introduction 33

them to stardom and celebrity status. This chapter highlights the

many subversions of the conventional romances in Datta’s brand
of romance fiction—written from the male point of view, existing
in the domain of the ‘real’ rather than that of ‘fantasy’, thereby
also providing the arena for the portrayal of lifestyle changes and
concerns of the young urban professionally educated millennials
in India, which also comprise its vast readership. Chapter 11,
“India’s Tryst with Flash Fiction: A Terribly Tiny Tale” by Rachit
Raj and Pranjali Gupta engages with the emerging genre of flash
fiction and micro-fiction in India and the role played by Indian
websites in providing a platform for the development of this
genre. Besides TTT, Raj and Gupta also draw our attention to
the role of the young Indo-Canadian writer Rupi Kaur’s work in
cementing the genre of insta-poetry, and they present the case that
in the times to come, flash fiction shall be the torch-bearer for
literature.
In the final Chapter 12, “Online Writer and the New Age
Popular”, Prachi Sharma invokes the famed essay, Decolonising
the Mind by the African culturalist Ngugi wa Thiong’o to make
a significant but oft-quoted concern about the role of language.
Ngugi refers to language as having a dual character; it is both “the
means of communication” and “the carrier of culture” (Thiong’o,
1986, p. 1). So it would be prudent to say that the all easy, relatable
language employed by the young creative media savvy Chetan Bhagat
brigade, reflect a culture inhabited by most of the urban youth of
today. It also communicates well not only with the young but the
marginalised as well, allowing them to speak of their aspirations
and fears in their own voice without an ideological hijack. In her
chapter, Prachi emphasises that “Literature is social.” She brings
in Thomas T. Hills, professor of psychology at the University
of Warwick, England, who says that if the trend continues, “We
should all be speaking and writing something like ‘Twitterese’ in
the next several hundred years” (2015). While upholding the value
of online writing, Prachi strongly feels that in a fast-moving digital
world, people scroll faster than they jog.
34 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Conclusion
If the relevance of the present conglomerate that IPCF is, is to be
measured against the backdrop of globalisation, Simi Malhotra’s
statement that it “offers us a duality: on the one hand, as the global
mesh expands, local forms succumb and lose their specificities;
on the other, since globalisation works by co-opting the local,
by adjusting them to the global idiom, the local actually finds a
presence in it and through it” (in Srivastava & Chawla 2017, p. 4)
holds true. Thus, one can invoke and use the term, ‘glocal’ for
these texts, as ‘the creation and incorporation of locality, processes
which, themselves largely shape, in turn, the compression of the
world as a whole’’ (Roland Robertson 1995, quoted by Malhotra,
p. 4). Suman Gupta validates the above:
…the condition of English language commercial fiction in
India has something to do with the English-speaking middle-
class youth, and something to do with global awareness or
globalisation processes in relation to a changing sense of national
awareness or local lives. These are obviously closely intertwined;
arguably it is the youth in question who cultivate the local/
global awareness, and equally this awareness in question appeals
to the youth (2012, p. 48).
A contemplation of the global/local dimension in relation to
Indian Popular Commercial Fiction, first in terms of processes of
publication and circulation (the means of production) and second
in terms of the broad characteristics and reception of such fiction
(product and consumption) in the words of Suman Gupta (2012,
p. 46) offers a certain kind of resistance to the subservient alignment
to academia as the ‘centre’. This, further provokes the facilitation
of the ‘other’ in literary and cultural discourse. This is much in
line with Pierre Bourdieu’s statement about the celebration of ‘the
remarkable of the unremarkable’—the everyday (Srivastava, 2006,
pp. 5-6) that forms the core of popular commercial fiction.
We inhabit a particular moment in history and all our cultural
products bear a testimony to this fact. As the second decade of
the 21st century comes to a close under the shadow of a global
pandemic, this anthology assesses the rhizomatic trajectories that
 Introduction 35

the realm of the Indian Popular Commercial Fiction with all its
stakeholders: authors, corporate publishers, editors and marketeers,
has assumed in the Indian literary and cultural landscape. To have
a panoptical view of Indian popular commercial fiction would be
unjust. Popular is not static. It mutates. Popular has now become
popular. Let the consumer-reader who has made this happen, the
devil who laps up this formulaic fiction, be given their due today.
Let this anthology not be read as an indulgence in post postcolonial
post-mortems! Rather, let it be taken as a salaam to the riders of
the Kitsch.

Notes
1. The NEP 2020 proposes a three-language formula, of which
two must be of native origin—“The three languages learned by
children will be the choices of states, regions, and of course, the
students themselves, so long as at least two of the three languages
are native to India.” This restricts the choice between English
and any other foreign language which under the earlier formula
was provided as an option along with Sanskrit and other native
languages.
2. A recent study conducted by Leena Bhattacharya and
S. Chandrashekhar at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development
Research shows that though Hindi is the dominant language of
India, English as a link language continues to gain strength. The
proportion of children studying in English almost doubled from
12 per cent to 23 per cent between 2007-08 and 2017-18. Many
states also changed the medium of education in government-
run schools. See report by Himani Chhapia, ‘English gaining
strength as link language, reveals study’, in The Times of India,
August 22, 2020.
3. See, Saikat Majumdar at Kolkata Book Fair, 2017. https://
kolkatabookfair.net/the-vernacular-life-of-english/
4. This title from Paramita Ghosh 2011 “Write Moves”, The
Hindustan Times, 27th February was found extremely relevant for
what we wanted to say about IPCF writers and their strategies.
5. Excerpt published in Indian Literature, No. 216, Sahitya Akademi,
New Delhi, July-August 2003, pp. 168-75.
36 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

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____ (2006). “The Culture Conundrum: Can It Be Popular”. Yearly
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Srivastava, P.K. & Chawla, G. (Eds.) (2017). Re-storying the Indigenous
and the Popular Imaginary. Authorspress.
Viswanathan, G. (1998). Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British
Rule in India, Oxford University Press.
Weaver, J.A. (2005). Popular Culture PRIMER. Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
Westergaard, P.G. (2018). How to Read Contemporary Indian
Literature—An Interview with Tabish Khair. [blog]. https://
petergraarupwestergaard.com/2018/11/26/how-to-read­
contemporary-indian-literature-an-interview-with-tabish-khair/
 I
Dismantling Hierarchies
 1
‘Popular’ and ‘Classic’: Deconstructing
the Categories
Ruchi Nagpal

Popular literature or Genre literature has evolved through years

and is now a well-established field of study. The collective interest
of students as well as English teachers proposing this course in
various universities has also increased. “The growing interest among
humanistic scholars and teachers in popular culture is one of the
more exciting academic trends of the present day” (p. 203), writes
John G. Cawelti (2001) in his essay, ‘The Concept of Formula in the
Study of Popular Literature,’ which confirms the growing trend of
popular literature as an academic discipline. Popular literature has
been received well in the past few years which sheds considerable
light on the change in perception with English literature in general
and classic literature in particular. The change in attitude towards
popular literature, however, is a much too apparent phenomenon
and Pawling affirms to it as he writes:
There are some indications that attitudes are changing and
that popular fiction is beginning to be accepted as a serious
area of study. The last few years have witnessed the emergence
of the new interdisciplinary courses, such as cultural study or
communications (in Britain this development has taken place
largely outside the universities which are much more rigidly
discipline oriented than their American counterparts) where the
42 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

prejudice against studying popular literature is, theoretically,

much less marked. (2000, p. 123)
However, Christopher Pawling also warns that, “Although there
has been a growth of interest in popular fiction over the last few
years, one could not claim that it has been established in schools or
colleges as a central component of literary studies.” (2000, p. 123) He
adds that it would be foolish to assume that popular literature has
been accepted on a permanent basis and in the scenario of growing
educational contraction, the principle of “last in, first out” may be
applied by those who have a very traditional approach to literature.
Often, we find a comparison between popular fiction and
mainstream English literature which is inevitable. Literature as a
dominant field of study in English language hardly provides a space
for popular literature as the conventional notions despise popular
fiction as common literature, which they feel is not suitable for
interpretation and analysis. “The identity of English literature as
an intellectual discipline is, in part, dependent on a ‘significant
other’—popular literature or ‘para-literature’—whose absence from
the conventional syllabus is crucial in helping to constitute the
dominant literary culture” (Pawling, 2000, p. 127). Such assumptions
and prejudices related to popular fiction hinders the development
of the category and we often tend to refer to popular fiction as ‘soft
literature’, which is not as academically suitable as the mainstream
dominant English literature. The popular/elite dichotomy impedes
the critical analysis subjected to canonical texts.
Popular, as a term, has not been given a specific definition.
The term remains ambiguous and the general meaning ascribed
to it by OED is ‘something common among the general public’
or ‘concerning the people’. Longman’s New Universal Dictionary,
published in 1982, lists four meanings for ‘popular’:
1) of the general public
2) suited to the needs, means, tastes or understanding of the
general public
3) having general currency
4) commonly liked or approved
 ‘Popular’ and ‘Classic’: Deconstructing the Categories 43

Morag Shiach in her essay, ‘A History of Changing Definitions

of The Popular’ says that “‘The Popular’ is that which is well liked
by a number of individuals, or that which is accessible to the
layman” (Shiach, 1989, p. 24). Popular, says Shiach, sometimes
assumes a negative connotation as people often equate anything
popular with lowly, common and plebeian. The term has evolved
and has been defined in numerous ways and as Shiach writes in
her essay that people now have started to take popular “quite
gravely and sincerely as a synonym for good” (Shiach, 1989, p. 27).
Having considered these definitions of the term ‘Popular’, one can
assume that popular is something which is liked by the people of a
particular milieu and suits their contemporary culture, taste, needs
and liking.
The term ‘classic’, however, stands as an opposite to ‘popular’.
The general meaning of the term ‘classic’ as provided by OED is
‘something exhibiting timeless quality’. The definition of classic
is a highly debated topic. It sometimes expresses the quality of
a particular work and sometimes refers to a work which stands
the test of time. ‘Classical literature’ thus refers to that rubric of
literature, works which were exquisite in their times and still hold
the same relevance in contemporary times. These works withstand
the ravages of time and continue to educate, enlighten and inspire
people of all times. Shakespeare’s Othello and Macbeth are classics
which hold relevance in contemporary times also. Classic is thus
something, which is timeless, and the content of a classic work
never becomes obsolete. Classic is that which remains unmoved
by the changes in time and continues to assert its relevance across
ages.
In a recent article in The New Yorker, Sam Sacks questions
what we understand as a ‘classic’ and how much reverence should
it command. What makes a text classic and how does it come to
assume that status. T.S. Eliot, in his Presidential address to the
Virgil Society talks about what exactly is a classic. As he analyses
and reflects upon the category, he goes on to give prime impetus to
the “maturity of mind, maturity of manners, maturity of language,
perfection of the common style.” (Eliot, 1957, p. 1). In 1850, Charles
44 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Augustin Sainte—Beuve, who is also considered the forefather of

modern criticism, gave this charming summation to the word:
A true classic, as I should like it defined, is an author who has
enriched the human mind, increased its treasure, and caused
it to advance a step; who has discovered some moral and not
equivocal truth, or revealed some eternal passion in that heart
where all seemed known and discovered; who has expressed his
thought, observation, or invention in no matter what form,
only provided it be broad and great, refined and sensible, sane
and beautiful in itself; who has spoken in its own peculiar style,
a style which is found to be also that of the whole world, a style
without neologism, new and old, easily contemporary with all
time (Beauve, 1850, p. 1).
The problem arises when we use these terms together. ‘Popular
classics’ becomes a really arbitrary term which goes on to include
one category completely and discards the other one (completely).
‘Popular classics’ becomes a self-contradictory category. If one is
to look at the definition of ‘popular classics’ then it is noteworthy
that the definition is exactly as that of the term ‘classic’. Scholars
define ‘popular classics’ within the framework of the great classic
tradition and literary gatekeepers assign an elevated status to such
texts, whereas the marketers have time and again looked at the
intrinsic qualities which attract a wide readership to such texts.
‘Popular classics’ as a broad rubric includes texts like Jane Eyre by
Charlotte Bronte, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, A Tale of
Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Hamlet by Shakespeare and it goes
back to Iliad by Homer. The category ‘popular classics’ goes on to
include all the classics since the very inception of literature up to
the 20th century.
The texts mentioned above are an integral part of the English
literary canon and thus are classics because these texts are read,
analysed and interpreted in contemporary times also. As a
corollary, one can say that these texts were ‘popular’ in their own
times and were read, favoured and liked by the people of that
milieu. Shakespeare was not a classic writer in the 16th century
and likewise Hamlet was not a classic text in the 16th century.
 ‘Popular’ and ‘Classic’: Deconstructing the Categories 45

Shakespeare and his works were ‘popular’ in the 16th century and
were widely read. Shakespeare was a ‘popular’ playwright of the
Elizabethan Age and his works ring true in the contemporary era as
well. He has been read repeatedly and his texts have been canonised
which has rather preserved Shakespeare as a ‘popular’ and ‘classic’
playwright. Canonisation plays an integral role in classicising
various authors and their works. The writers who are a part of the
literary canon enjoy a superior status over those writers who have
not been canonised. The entire process of canonisation, thus, takes
into account the ‘popular’ writers of various centuries or rather
canonisation makes the writers of various centuries ‘popular’. “The
literary works by canonical authors are the ones that, at a given
time, are most kept in print, most frequently and fully discussed by
literary critics and historians. And—in the present era—most likely
to be included in anthologies and in the syllabi of college courses
with titles such as “World Masterpieces,” “Major English Authors,”
or “Great American Writers”” (Abrams & Harpham, 2015, p. 43).
Shakespeare’s works became a touchstone for the writers of the
Elizabethan era. Shakespeare has been a part of English literature and
has been taught in every university, upholding the status of greatness
of the bard. Shakespeare’s popularity also makes one contemplate
the times in which he was writing. Christopher Marlowe, Thomas
Kyd and Ben Johnson were Shakespeare’s immediate successors
and predecessors but Shakespeare’s popularity is unparalleled. This
shows that the process of canonisation considers only the popular
texts and authors of a given era and those who were not popular and
widely read could not make it to the canon and thus are not as well
known today as Shakespeare is. Canon, thus, takes a popular text,
iconises it, makes it a part of the literary tradition and classicises it
over a period of time.
The term ‘popular classics’ thus accounts for the fact that a
text which is a classic was popular at some point of time and thus,
had it been prejudiced against for being popular and widely read
then it would not have become a classic. The category of popular
literature is treated with several nuances as compared to that of
classic literature or ‘high’ literature. There supposedly exists two
46 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

ways of analysis; one suitable for popular literature and one for
classic or high literature. Popular literature is often considered to
be the opposite of mainstream literature, the parallel industry that
works for the masses. But as Cawelti says, we have to foremost
consider that, “Formula literature (popular literature) is, first of all,
a kind of literary art. Therefore, it can be analysed and evaluated
like any other kind of literature” (Cawelti, 2001, p. 212).
A recent article, ‘The Radical Argument of the New Oxford
Shakespeare’ by Danniel Pollack Pelzner states that people in a
given era are so psychologically dominated by the milieu of their
time that they fail to ascribe excellence to a work independent of
the author. “Is it good because it is Shakespeare, or do we want it
to be Shakespeare because it’s so good?” says Pelzner (2015, p. 1)
which deliberately highlights the fact that Shakespeare’s popularity
in that century accounted for the success of his works and his
works became a touchstone for others. Shakespeare’s popularity
made him a classic and as a popular classic writer of today’s times,
he enjoys privilege over those of his contemporaries who weren’t
as popular as he was. The author dominating the work of art and
the one theological meaning coming from the author/God is a
perception which has been challenged and the function which an
author performs vis-à-vis a text has also been problematised by the
likes of Barthes and Foucault. The postmodern understanding of
literature radically separates the text from the author but it goes
without saying that classics or the dominant literary canon seems
to be dominated more by authors rather than texts per se.
Shakespeare’s works were also subjected to serious criticism
and were picked at by various critics and authors like Samuel Pepys,
G.B. Shaw, Voltaire, etc. Leo Tolstoy, one of the most notorious
critics of Shakespeare, wrote in his essay, ‘On Shakespeare and
Drama’ in (1906) that Shakespeare’s plays are “trivial and positively
bad.” Tolstoy wrote, “I have felt, with even greater force, the same
feelings—this time, however, not of bewilderment, but of firm,
indubitable conviction that the unquestionable glory of a great
genius, which Shakespeare enjoys and which compels writers of our
time to imitate him and readers and spectators to discover in him
 ‘Popular’ and ‘Classic’: Deconstructing the Categories 47

non-existent merits (thereby distorting their aesthetic and ethical

understanding)—is a great evil, as is every untruth” (Tolstoy, 1906,
p. 1).
Literature, thus, at every point of time in history has been
criticised but it does not stop either the text or the author of the
concerned text to achieve an elevated status. Popular literature
has also been under scrutiny for various reasons. As the popular
opinion goes against popular literature, people seem to follow
certain stereotypical notions in their treatment of the category.
These notions border on the vulgar and the profane. This attitude
further limits the category and collective interest of English liberals.
Contrary to this belief, popular literature presents the readers with
socio-cultural and political issues of a particular time and hence
enlightens them more than any other form of literature. In a subtle
and nuanced way, popular literature deals with the contemporary
issues and the texts often tend to be a microcosm of the society one
is living in. For Cawelti, formulaic fiction (popular fiction) has the
function of reproducing cultural consensus, in contrast to mimetic
elite fiction. A popular text educates the readers of a particular
milieu about the issues prevalent at that time and highlights the
problems prevailing in a particular era in a much simpler and exact
fashion.
A text written in a particular era is imbued with the moral
and cultural implications of its milieu and thus the texts written
in contemporary era display the concerns and problems of this
era. All popular texts do not necessarily talk about the prevailing
problems but every author in some way or the other targets a
group of audience, which the author feels will relate to the central
theme of the work. Thus, the author in a way addresses a seminal
issue or way of life, which is a part of a larger group of people.
Popular fiction is the “first rate storyteller” (Hamilton & Jones) as
each story tells a tale which reflects the desires of ordinary people.
Popular fiction has the power to touch the compassion of the
readers. And thus popular texts are constantly competing to reach
at the centre where they get elevated to the status of ‘high’ literature
and often canonised. Cawelti looks at popular literature as a mode
48 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

of escape and he says that it achieves widespread popularity as it

provides consolation to the readers—“the tensions, ambiguities
and frustrations of ordinary experience are painted over by magic
pigments of adventure, romance and mystery” (Pawling, 2000,
p. 135).
The recent developments in cultural studies have deliberately
subverted the distinctions in traditional criticism between high
literature and what were considered the lower forms that appeal
to a much larger body of consumers. With Cultural Studies
establishing its stronghold in the universities, popular literature
and other art forms which have a mass appeal have become the
focus of introspection and analysis. With figures like Roland
Barthes, Raymond Williams, etc., Popular has been rechristened as
Cultural Studies which has revolutionised the entire category. As
Abram and Harpham write, “Typically, cultural studies pay least
attention to works in the established literary canon than to popular
fiction, bestselling romances (that is, love stories), journalism, and
advertising, together with other arts that have mass appeal such
as cartoon comics, film, television, soap operas, and rock and rap
music” (Abrams & Harpham, 2015, p. 75). Many areas of Cultural
Studies are devoted to the analysis of objects outside the literary
canonical realm, which have a larger social and cultural importance.
“These phenomena are viewed as endowed with meanings that are
the product of social forces and conventions and that may either
express or oppose the dominant structures of power in a culture”
(Abrams & Harpham, 2015, p. 76).
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is a very popular classic text of
the early 19th century. The novel revolves around the Bennet family
and the central protagonist is Elizabeth Bennet. The novel, written
in the early 19th century sheds considerable light on the society of
that time. Marriage was the primary goal of a woman’s life for the
want of a stable and secure future. “Pride and Prejudice explores
the special question of the meaning of freedom, given the premise
which Jane Austen assumes throughout her fiction that the relation
between a character and public reality is at once problematic and
necessary” (Morgan, 1975, p. 1). Austen was writing at a time when
 ‘Popular’ and ‘Classic’: Deconstructing the Categories 49

women were relegated to the domestic sphere and did not have
the freedom to chart out a way for themselves. Elizabeth, despite
being a very witty and confident girl was nevertheless in search of a
‘Mr. Right’. The novel talks about the law of entailment in a rigidly
patriarchal society. The future ownership of real estate is limited
solely to male heirs. As Mr. Bennet has no male children, his estate
will be entailed to Mr. Collins as opposed to his own daughters.
With the imposition of entailment in the novel, comes a pressure
for women to search for a husband in order to attain a secure life.
The case however is different when we come to the 20th century
and look at Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) by Helen Fielding, which is
a modern popular text and a reworking of Pride and Prejudice. The
central protagonist Bridget Jones doesn’t crave for freedom, liberty,
or independence in the same manner as the Bennet sisters. She is a
modern-day woman who has the liberty to take her own decisions
and live her life on her own terms and conditions. The social,
cultural and political concerns of the former waves of feminism are
no longer as relevant to women today since now they have much
more freedom, and also the agency to make their own choices.
Women in the 21st century do not necessarily crave for freedom but
in a post-feminist world they fight with other problems like women’s
representation in social media, workplace sexism, body shaming,
etc. Helen Fielding shows her protagonist combating sexism at her
workplace, which, of course, is a modern-day issue. Fielding caters
to the contemporary woman who deals with the issues of marriage,
career, workplace discrimination, etc., which are much too specific
to the modern world. Authors are primarily influenced by their
milieu and what both Austen and Fielding have written is largely a
product of their respective eras. What then made Pride and Prejudice
a literary classic and did not give the same status to Bridget Jones’s
Diary is highly debatable. Both the writers, through their respective
works, showcased the problems and dilemmas of their respective
times. How women were treated and they channelised their lives is
central to both the texts but having been written in two different
centuries, the disparities between the two texts are considerable.
The plot of both the texts is the same but Fielding develops her
character according to the modern understanding and thus, the
50 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

much quoted, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single

man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”,
(Austen, 1813, p. 1) from Pride and Prejudice becomes, “It’s the
truth universally acknowledged that the moment one area of your
life starts going ok, another part of it falls spectacularly to pieces’’
(Fielding, 1996, p. 5).
When one comes to cultural studies and popular literature, the
economic parameters become indispensable. The number of copies
sold and the monetary profit that a book secures defines its success
more than anything in contemporary times. The pricelessness gets
substituted by bestselling and most in print which changes the
equation altogether. A recent study shows that Shakespeare is also
one of the bestselling playwrights in the world with almost 4 billion
copies sold in 400 years since his death. The economic parameter
with which the recent study has valued the genius of Shakespeare is
something new because classic texts are always looked at for their
aesthetic values and their timelessness but, “There is an inevitable
tendency towards standardisation implicit in the economy of
modern publishing”, says Cawelti (2001, p. 215). Evaluation of
Shakespeare, thus, under modern parameters requires looking
into the number of copies sold as a marker of success, which is
inevitable for popular fiction. The number of copies sold however
chiefly determines the popularity of a particular text in today’s
time. Other motives and characteristics are also evaluated because
a text has certain specific narrative techniques which people affirm
to and which make the work a success. Looking at the popular texts
of the 21st century, the economic factors and number of copies
sold are the major parameters. And if we thus equate the popular
texts of the 21st century with Shakespearean texts, one would see
that certain contemporary popular texts are selling as much as
Shakespearean texts. To cite an example, the Harry Potter series has
sold between 50 million to 100 million copies worldwide. Judging
by economic parameters, one can say that the popular texts of the
21st century, if canonised, can become classics some time in the
future. Therefore, every text which is popular in this era has the
potential to become a classic, provided it stands the test of time.
 ‘Popular’ and ‘Classic’: Deconstructing the Categories 51

In a postmodern world, the texts written represent the psyche

of the readers. “Postmodernism involves not only a continuation,
sometimes carried to an extreme, of the counter traditional
experiments of modernism but also diverse attempts to break away
from modernist forms which had, inevitably, become in their turn
conventional, as well as to overthrow the elitism of modernist ‘high
art’ by recourse for models to the ‘mass culture’ of film, television,
newspaper cartoons, and popular music” (Abrams & Harpham,
2015, p. 228). One of the primary tenets of postmodernism is the
bridging of the gulf between high art and popular culture. Thus,
the dyad of high and mass becomes all the more elusive in these
times. Postmodernism has dethroned the prevalent elitism of texts
by venturing into all areas alike. A thorough understanding of
the two categories tells us that the two are not the two ends of a
spectrum but are mutually exclusive categories separated by the
time which ‘popular’ takes to become a ‘classic’. The categories
‘popular’ and ‘classic’ are then synonymous if one is to consider
because all the canonical texts of English literature were ‘popular’
in their respective times and thus the way we treat the category of
popular literature in contemporary times is quite ironic because a
‘popular’ is perhaps a future ‘classic’.

References
Abrams, M.H. & Harpham, G.G. (2015). A Glossary of literary terms.
Cengage Learning.
Austen, J. (1813). Pride and prejudice. Harper Press.
Cawelti, J.G. (2001). ‘The study of literary formulas’ in Popular culture:
Production and consumption, (pp. 121-142). Oxford Blackwell
Publishing.
____ (2001). ‘The Concept of Formula in the Study of Popular
Literature’, in Popular culture: Production and consumption,
(pp. 203-219). Oxford Blackwell Publishing.
Eliot. T.S. (1957). ‘What is a Classic’? On poetry and poets. tseliot.com
Fielding, H. (1996). Bridget Jones’s diary. Penguin Books.
Justin St. Claire. ‘The opposite of literature.’ Science Fiction Studies,
34(1), 139-141. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4241502
52 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Morgan, S. (1975). Intelligent in ‘pride and prejudice’. Modern Philology,

Vol. 73, No. 1, 54-68. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/ 436104
Pawling, C. (2000). Introduction: Popular fiction: Ideology or utopia?
In Background prose readings: Popular fiction, (pp. 122-139).
Worldview.
Pelzner, D.P. (2015). The Radical Argument of the new Oxford
Shakespeare, http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/
the-radical-argument-of-the-new-oxford-shakespeare
Sacks, S. (2008). Canon Fodder: Denouncing the classics. www.
newyorker.com/boooks/page-turner/canon-fodder-denouncing­
the-classics.
Shiach, M. (1989). A history of changing definitions of the popular.
Discourse on popular culture: Class, gender and history in cultural
analysis, 1730 to the present, (pp. 19-34). Polity Press.
Tolstoy, L. (1906). Tolstoy on Shakespeare.en.m.wikisource.org.
 2
Literary Fiction as Popular Fiction: Reading
Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies
Deblina Rout

Popular commercial fiction has more often than not, been viewed
as unworthy of critical attention, and is often cast aside as lacking
the moral assertion that is the hallmark of ‘literary fiction’.
Jhumpa Lahiri’s anthology, Interpreter of Maladies, has been one
of those landmark works which has negated this assertion. It won
the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Hemingway Foundation/
PEN Award in the year 2000 and has sold over 15 million copies
worldwide; Oprah Winfrey included it in her Top Ten Book List.
These statistics show how the canon of popular literature is not
utterly irrelevant, and can be moulded to cater to both mass society
and high culture.
The nine stories included in the collection bring up motifs
of loss and belonging and are stories about the lives of Indians
and Indian Americans who are caught between their roots and
the “New World.” These stories focus on the lives and cultures of
ordinary individuals in transition, echoing the ethos of dislocation
and the fragility of emotional bonding. All the while, amidst its
melancholic overtones, the collection dwells upon the hope for
a better future, and a tomorrow that seems promising. With
these concerns, it mirrors its targeted readership: the emerging
urban middle class, fraught with flaws, yet ambitious enough
54 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

to dream high. Adorned with a stunning prose, which neither

lingers unnecessarily nor is too tight to demand heavy intellectual
investment, the stories are written for the layman, in a language
that resembles everyday dialogic encounters. The characters echo
the flesh and blood dilemmas of the readers, reflecting the flavour
of popular fiction. Yet, the literary value of the book cannot be
underestimated. Thus, the aim of the paper is to address these so-
called binaries of literary fiction and popular fiction with Jhumpa
Lahiri’s text under scrutiny.
The year was 1997. Erika, a young woman, was travelling with her
husband, reading a crime novel on the Moscow metro. The book
was wrapped in brown paper, concealing its identity. It was the
end of the ride that brought with it the secret of the cover: Erika
was engrossed in a Russian crime novel, a supposedly “trashy”
piece of genre fiction. Her reasons for secrecy were potent: for
the erudite literary preoccupation of the highbrow Muscovite,
such a selection reflected poor taste. Her husband, sitting beside
her, wondered: Could Russian crime fiction be sophisticated
and literary at the same time? The answer was a difficult, but
resounding yes: the man went on to write a series of fictional
tales, which blended “literature with entertainment”. The series
was hugely successful in Russia and abroad; more importantly,
it marked a turning point in the history of Russian Literature,
ending the fundamental assumption that high culture cannot
find a place among the masses.1
While this anecdote is the oft quoted story of Russian translator
and academic Grigory Chkhartashvili, it is also a narrative of the
divisive and rapidly developing literary landscape of the world
today. Rapid developments in the fields of trade, market, commerce
and telecommunication technologies, together with cultural
confrontations at the global level have fundamentally changed
the face of literature. Literary engagement in the past decade has
largely transplanted the market induced dichotomies of the literary
versus popular, the blockbuster versus boutique, the high culture
versus lowbrow mass culture. The Indian literary landscape has
been no exception; in a country with the sixth largest book market
 Literary Fiction as Popular Fiction: Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s... 55

in the world, the distinction is starker.2 Slippages have obviously

occurred, and a considerable amount of fiction assumes neither of
the appendages completely. A number of titles have acquired the
status of being literary masterpieces, while sharing space with mass
market paperbacks on bookshelves. This paper attempts to locate
the anxieties and conciliatory claims that mark the antagonistic
presence of popular fiction and literary fiction in India, with a
close look at Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize winning anthology,
Interpreter of Maladies (1999).
The term culture has had a long and chequered history, and its
association with the field of literature is likewise long and in constant
evolution. Culture has been defined as, “the symbolic, ideational,
and intangible aspect of human societies. The essence of a culture
is not its artefacts, tools, or other tangible cultural elements but
how the members of the group interpret, use, and perceive them”
(Banks and Banks, 2004, p. 8). Fiction appropriates culture, serving
as an analytical tool which reflects the idiosyncrasies latent in that
culture. On the other hand, culture divides and partly dictates the
stratification fiction is subjected to. In relegating fiction to the
sphere of high/low culture, it facilitates or restricts the movement
of fiction in social circles. Hence it can be inferred that literary
traditions and cultural practices have always been closely linked.
The term ‘popular’ has seen great etymological transience.
Raymond Williams’ Keywords (1976) traced the history of popular
culture as inferior kind of work (as in popular literature, popular
press), and work deliberately setting out to win favour (popular
journalism, popular entertainment), as well as ‘trivial’ work that
is well-liked by many people. As such, ‘popular’ fiction becomes
a contested category of literature, and various contradictory
trajectories have mapped its lineage and development. Scott
McCracken’s definition of popular fiction as, “fiction that is read by
large numbers of people”, is perhaps the most faithful explanation
of its mass appeal (1998, p. 1). Popular fiction is designed for the
masses. Noel Carroll’s view of mass art as being “intentionally
designed to gravitate in its structural choices towards those choices
that promise accessibility with minimum effort, virtually on first
56 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

contact for the largest number of untutored audiences”, holds true

for fiction as well (1998, p. 196). Literature is not created in a
vacuum: it is inspired by, and contingent upon the society of which
it is a part. The kind of fiction that is consumed on a large scale by
a particular society is therefore, an indicator of the values and belief
systems embedded in the society. Popular fiction, in Clive Bloom’s
words, serves as the “barometer of contemporary imagination,” by
representing these value systems in the form of multiple genres
(2002, p. 15).
Popular fiction has received scholarly attention for being
shaped by contemporary literary impulses, and also as a cultural
and industrial commodity, shaped by various forces external to it.
In terms of literary products, Gelder considers popular fiction to be
the “opposite of Literature’’ (Literature here signifies quality literary
works, as opposed to a general field of writing) (2004, p. 11). Such
a literary product cannot be formed in isolation, and is shaped by
the pulse of the society at a given time, decreasing its favourability
within scholarly circles. The industry and other cultural forms
which inform its existence, commodify fiction as part of the logics
and mechanisms of commerce. Popular fiction becomes “a kind of
industrial practice” and its “writers” use the “language of industry”.
(Gelder, 2004, p. 15). In becoming a part of the entertainment
industry, popular fiction becomes a focal point for the influx of
ideas of the dominant/majoritarian culture and has an immediate
hand in the perpetuation of the same. Its contingency upon
cultural motifs, temporality, and a zeitgeist peculiar to the time of
its production, together with its commercialisation makes popular
fiction akin to mass/lowbrow culture in scholarly parlance. Ashley
states that such neglect is the result of the negative attitude of
literary criticism which considers popular fiction to be “the second-
rate fiction”, or “a kind of cultural detritus” (Ashley, 1997, p. 3).
A major contention in considering popular fiction as a canon
is that it is not sui generis. Its canonicity has almost always been
defined against the parameters of literary fiction, the latter being a
standpoint of what literature should be, ideally. Scholarly consensus
defines literary fiction as having “tangled plots” and “intense
 Literary Fiction as Popular Fiction: Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s... 57

formal artistry”; its authors’ focus on discourses of originality and

creativity (Amis, 2001, p. 327). It refuses cultural and temporal
contingency, is rarely shaped by the flux of market trends and
resists categorisation into genres. Its transcendental value is the
leitmotif which deems it ‘worthy’ of criticism in literary studies.
Being in favour with a minoritarian rhetoric ensures that literary
fiction remains within an elitist insulation, whose fundamentals
are decided by those with power and privilege. ‘High culture’ is
the word intended for such niche circles, which represent whatever
is antagonistic to mass/popular imagination. In adhering to a
framework which does not depend on economic or socio-political
doldrums, literary fiction inevitably belongs to the terrain of high
culture.
Attempting a comparative study of popular and literary fiction
inevitably demands a conscious acknowledgement of the slippages
that must mark such semantically loaded terms. Peter Lamarque
and Stein Haugom Olsen argue that escapist or genre fiction
ought to be excluded from consideration under the rubric of the
literary; yet they admit that a work can, nevertheless, be added
to or subtracted from the canon according to critical evaluation
and revaluation, thereby asserting the slippery distinction between
‘high’ and ‘low’ literature (1997, p. 434). More often than not, the
popular contains traces of the literary, and the literary is informed
by elements which resonate with certain cultural or political motifs
in vogue. Traces of high culture are embedded within mass fiction
nowadays; the term ‘mainstream fiction’ has been coined for such
works. Booksellers and publishers use this tag to account for the
literature which cannot cater to previously defined moulds—but it
poses more questions than it can possibly answer.
The desiccation of literature to fit the facile distinctions of the
‘high or estimable’ and the ‘popular or representative’ has been the
single most defining characteristic of Indian fiction in English, in
the contemporary scenario. A number of significant changes, in the
conception, production and reception of home grown literature,
since its initial foray into the global scene, has influenced this
rupture. As compared to other postcolonial nations, India has had
58 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

an established and developed literary scene since independence,

which further evolved with its global economic prominence in the
subsequent decades. R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, and Raja Rao,
and the likes heralded the embryonic stage of the chronological
transition of a newly independent culture into a modern nation
state. Roughly upto the 1970s, the canon of Indian English fiction
was marked by the “spirit of anti-colonial nationalism and a unique
identity” (Luhar & Choudhary, 2017, p. 5). This was done solely at
the level of content; the style and motifs undoubtedly betrayed the
imbibition of Western hegemony.
The 1980s brought with it a paradigm shift in the field of
Indian fiction in English, owing to a growing anti-imperialistic
surge. Attempts to decolonise the formal aspects of literary writing
were on; for the first time, colonial motifs and linguistic heritage
were discarded for the sake of a unique ‘Indian’ identity (Luhar
& Choudhary, 2017, p. 5). Post-1980s, a number of authors
including Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Anita Desai, Arundhati
Roy, Rohinton Mistry, and Kiran Desai to name a few, constructed
a canon which embodied a new Indian consciousness both in form
and content. Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981) was
instrumental in this regard, arguably marking the beginning of this
literary independence. Books such as Amitav Ghosh’s Shadow Lines
(1988), Arundhati Roy’s Booker Prize winning novel The God of
Small Things (1997), Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy (1994), Jhumpa
Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize winning Interpreter of Maladies (1999) gained
India international visibility and acclaim. Subsequently, the book
industry of the 1990s and 2000s distinguished itself from earlier
decades by increasing the foray of the local into the global, the
‘home’, into the ‘world’.
Several factors played into the charting of India’s literary
face onto the global map; one of them was the proliferation of
independent and international publishers in India after the 1980s.
Prior to the 80s, publishing was largely a conduit for academic
purposes and scholarly exchange, and the printing press was an
underexplored arena. A change can be traced back to the setting up
of Penguin India in 1985, and independent publisher Ravi Dayal’s
 Literary Fiction as Popular Fiction: Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s... 59

commercial success with Amitav Ghosh’s 1988 novel Shadow Lines

(Gupta, p. 139). This paved the way for a lucrative publishing
industry in the country, which worked towards the diversification
of literature into several categories, subject to the risks and liabilities
of the market. The aesthetic and scholarly dimension of the book
went for a tripartite association with commerce, giving birth to the
stratification of the book into parameters of the literary and the
popular.
Indian American writer Jhumpa Lahiri’s debut collection of
stories, Interpreter of Maladies was published in 1999, and won the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction shortly afterwards (in 2000). It also won
the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award in the same year, and was
named the New Yorker’s debut of the year. It catapulted Lahiri as
an important writer both on the native Indian soil, as well as her
adopted homeland in America, strongly connecting her name to
the annals of immigrant writers in literary history. The book also
became a commercial success, starring on Oprah Winfrey’s Top Ten
Book List, and having sold over 15 million copies worldwide. An
international bestseller, the work has been translated into twenty-
nine languages so far. Further, it has been imbibed into the syllabi
of diasporic English writing in universities over the years. Both as
a subject of critical scholarly attention in academia and a talking
point in mainstream press, Lahiri’s work continues its hold over
popular imagination, almost two decades down its release.
Lahiri’s work was published at an interesting phase in the
history of Indian literature in English. This was a nascent phase for
popular/commercial/mainstream fiction, though it was emerging
as a strong contender in India. During the 1990s, India had initiated
its economic liberalisation policies that sought private and foreign
investment to tap on the growing population and to increase
consumer satisfaction3. The neoliberal policies hinted at the onset
of late capitalism, which focused on the ‘emerging markets’ in
India, and the rise of the young urban class sustaining it. A great
cultural displacement took place; this was the time of the rise of
the middle class as a potential power. Also, the economy received
substantial investment and remittance from the Indian Diaspora,
60 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

leading to the abnegation of negative connotations to immigration,

prevalent for the past few decades. The Non-Resident Indian (NRI)
became the epitome of ‘Indianness’ and embodied at once capitalist
and consumerist modernity and patriarchal Hindu nationalism4.
The diaspora became increasingly important in fashioning Indian
identities both at home and abroad, for this new globalised culture.
As a diaspora writer, Jhumpa Lahiri attempts to locate this
emerging middle class and its patrons; she attempts to situate her
work within the fabric of the Bengali/American expatriate identity,
occupying a hybrid space between the homeland and the adopted
land. Consisting of a cycle of nine short stories, which speak of
‘Bengal, Boston and Beyond’, the book highlights the life and times
of Indians and American Indians in search of identity, through
experiences of immigration. The blurb describes Lahiri’s characters
as “people navigating between the strict traditions they’ve inherited
and the baffling New World they must encounter every day” (2013,
first page). Being an Indian American herself, she links her stories
with the desire of staying “loyal to the old world and fluent in
the new”5, as she proclaimed in an interview. As such, each of the
stories express the common themes of exile, of displacement, loss
and belonging, and also of social and emotional anxieties bred by
the plurality of culture.
Saricks describes literary fiction as a ‘reflection’ on the human
condition, written elegantly, as a layered, lyrical narrative (2009,
p. 180). Indeed, through her characters, Lahiri presents a mimetic
model of the world she and her readers inhabit. Her characters are
not exoticised, monolithic figures, but complex, flawed characters
struggling with their emotional capacities. In the first story, “A
Temporary Matter’’, Shoba and Shukumar, a married couple, try to
come to terms with their failing relationship by exchanging secrets
with each other during a diurnal power cut session over a week.
Their exchange sessions become a meditation on the institution of
marriage itself, as the two characters grapple with their hybridised
identities, forged through cross cultural connections. Their
relations are strained by the death of their first child, but Shoba
and Shukumar have their own insecurities constantly working
 Literary Fiction as Popular Fiction: Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s... 61

against the dynamics of bonding. Shukumar is deeply insecure

about his professional mediocrity, while Shoba is tired from
the demands of a deadpan marital life, and also her fragmented
identity as an Indian American trying to locate her roots. At the
end, Shoba voices her decision to move to a place of her own,
bringing out in open the unspoken discord that had plagued their
life for long. The plot, a classic tale of marital discord, is driven by
the meditations of the couple, and is a character study into the later
years of marital life. Lahiri’s characters are the real heroes of the
narrative: the plot is driven by the characters in her stories, making
them a study on the existential vagaries of mankind, transcending
beyond geographical or cultural underpinnings. The polyphonic
markings of her narratives mimic the motivations which affect and
transform human life in general. The reader finds his life played
out by characters stuck in real life situations, eliciting an ‘emotional
involvement’ on the part of the reader.
The stories in the collection are deeply meditative, guided
by a conglomeration of themes of the diaspora, pertaining to
displacement, loss, and a profound sense of longing. The narrative
structure, for almost all the stories, moves in concentric circles—
beginning in medias res, the stories gradually unfold the multiple
moorings which dictate the lives of the characters. In almost all the
stories, Lahiri employs a sombre tone, which is matched by the lack
of a concrete sense of ending; much like life, there is no neat solution
to the crisis that the characters face. In “A Real Durwan”, Boori Ma
the central character, is a Bangladeshi immigrant, finding shelter
and a sense of home in an apartment building in Calcutta. She is
removed from the self-appointed position as the Durwan of the
apartment, after the characters feel that their improving standards
cannot be matched up by her services. She is replaced by a ‘real’
Durwan, one who can secure the “new face of the building” (Lahiri,
2013, p. 82). In return for her long rendered services, Boori Ma gets
nothing—the story ends with her receding figure in the background.
As such, the reader is left in a double dilemma, as to what happens
to her, and the members of the building. In leaving the plot open to
interpretations, Lahiri imposes the duty of poetic resolution onto
62 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

the minds of the readers. These compositional details, while being

situated in a particular time and place, also bring out universal
binaries such as that of tradition and modernity. The tales become
a reflection of universal human ethos and drives, transcending over
the age and spirit in which they are set.
With a number of universities all over the world recognising
its merit and including it in their curriculum, and literary awards
to its name, its literary value remains undiminished. However, its
commercial value in India and elsewhere cannot be undermined.
Close textual analysis reveals several motifs attributed to popular/
commercial fiction in the stories. Lahiri’s prose has been appreciated
by critics and readers alike; she writes a ‘dazzling’ prose, as one
reviewer specifies. It is neither too stilted nor heavy handed,
akin to what is found in classics or literary masterpieces; instead,
it mimics the everyday dialogic of the layman. She is careful to
temper the narrative with nuanced phrases and idioms peculiar to
the cultures the stories portray. For instance, the Bengali culture
in stories like “The Treatment of Bibi Halder”, and “A Real
Durwan”, is constructed by the native touches imparted to everyday
conversations. While Bibi Halder is asked to smell ‘leather’ as a
possible cure for her violent fits, Boori Ma is reminiscent of her
glorious past, which she remembers through the menu card of her
daughter’s wedding. “Rice cooked in rosewater, and mustard prawns
steamed in banana leaves” not only become delicacies peculiar to
Boori Ma’s imagination, but also reflect the Bengali culture of
which the characters are a part (Lahiri, 2013, p. 71). Such motifs
connect to specific positional and temporal ideas, and capture the
rhythms of everyday speech in writing, allowing the reader to slip
into the world of the characters.
Terrence Rafferty notes that “literary fiction, by its nature,
allows itself to dawdle, to linger on stray beauties even at the risk
of losing its way” (2011). In imitating everyday speech patterns,
Lahiri negates this assertion. She adopts a pace of storytelling that
is dictated by the stratified, time bound nature of modernity. As a
result, the stories do not come with the heavy intellectual or didactic
expectations associated with the haloed literary masterpieces. They
 Literary Fiction as Popular Fiction: Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s... 63

represent universal narratives which can be true for any individual

caught in situations as those of the characters, no matter which part
of the world he is in. A part of the popularity of the book comes
from the fact that it is an undemanding, and fast read, despite not
being low on literary skill or quality.
According to a research article published in the 2014 March
issue of the Administrative Science Quarterly, literary prizes are
a double-edged sword, and can make books less popular. In
the article called “The Paradox of Publicity: How Awards Can
Negatively Affect the Evaluation of Quality”, academics Amanda
Sharkley and Balazs Kovacs argue that, “winning a prestigious prize
in the literary world seems to go hand-in-hand with a particularly
sharp reduction in ratings of perceived quality”6. The reason for
the same, they propose, is because awards raise the expectations
of the readers, and often, they end up expecting great literary
somersaults in the name of a thoughtful and well-written book.
This ends up decreasing the sales, and consequently, such works
fly out of people’s favour gradually, prey to the fluctuations of the
market. Yet another contention with respect to awarded books is
that people do not access them, or they are not publicised as much.
They are cursorily in the news for their merit, but fizzle out of
public imagination because of multiple factors such as narrative
style, length, or dealings with esoteric subjects which have no direct
relation to the lives and affairs of the readers.
Interpreter of Maladies has had an enduring status not only in
academic circles, but also in the public rhetoric for nearly two decades
post its publication. The reasons obviously pertain to Lahiri’s merit
as a writer; she catches the pulse of a certain section of the society
without maintaining an exclusivity for readership. Lahiri’s stories
not only chart the anxiety of a diasporic community, but also the
aspirations of an upwardly mobile middle class society. At the time
of its publication, India was experiencing the birth of the middle
class as a burgeoning force; in the recent years, the middle classes
have emerged as a central socio-economic and political force. No
wonder, their anxieties and aspirations find expression in Lahiri’s
writing, decades later. Her linguistic style caters both to Bengali
64 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

and American sentiments, yet the stories posit themselves in a no

man’s land. The universality of love, loss and longing unites the
different narratives, and Lahiri is careful to indoctrinate any reader
who has been at the receiving end of such emotions.
Much of the credit in retaining the book in public favour also
rests on the publishing industry. In the case of Lahiri, her identity
as an Indian American has often been linked with the subject
matter of her book, providing a certain credibility to the narratives.
Commercial interests have tapped the potential of this personal
angle, and this has been mapped onto the process of publication.
For instance, the cover art of various editions of the book have a
distinct Oriental flavour, replete with Indian motifs such as Indian
lamps (diyas), rivers, and henna-applied hands and exotic flowers
(Appendix A). These stereotypical references produce the intended
effects of mystification and longing associated with the far East,
cashing upon Lahiri’s twin identity. Lahiri herself recognises this
trait, and writes, “Upon close inspection, my covers tend perfectly
to mirror my own double identity, bifurcated, disputed. As a
result they are often projections, conjectures” (Lahiri, 2017, p. 49).
However, such manoeuvres do have market benefits: While the
West accepts it as a peek into the exotic world of the East, the
East takes it as a homage to the relationship of belonging and
forgetting, between the estranged motherland and the expatriate.
The reviews of the book also reveal the reasons for the success
of the work in the commercial domain. A USA Today review says of
the book: “Dazzling writing, an easy-to-carry paperback format and
a budget-respecting price tag of $12: Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of
Maladies possesses these three qualities, making it my book of choice
this summer every time someone asks for a recommendation”
(Lahiri, 2013, Praise for Interpreter of Maladies). Yet another review
by Outlook India speaks of the ‘flawless’ quality of Lahiri’s writing,
advising the readers that it is “definitely worth your while. And
your money” (Lahiri, 2013, Praise for Interpreter of Maladies). The
HarperCollins 2013 edition of the book also has Amy Tan’s praise
on the back cover, saying that Jhumpa Lahiri is “the kind of writer
who makes you want to grab the next person” and say, “read this!”
 Literary Fiction as Popular Fiction: Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s... 65

(Lahiri, 2013, back cover). All the three reviews hint at the politics
of reading in a fast paced, consumerist economy, where reading
for pleasure itself, may at times become an act of defiance and
subversion.
It is difficult to exact a place for Interpreter of Maladies in the
history of Indian literature in English. On the Indian literary scene,
the significance of Lahiri’s work is immense. Although her stories
were written keeping in mind first generation immigrants, the
narrative espouses middle class values and the outsider’s longing
for homeland in a way that portrays a composite picture of the
Indian consciousness. Several Indian universities teach stories
from the collection as part of their curriculum, and the bookshops
neatly line the book on the racks for bestsellers. On the other
hand, wholesale book markets also keep cheap pirated copies of the
book, lined up along with the latest fiction and non-fiction titles
released in the market. It is then that its identity as a literary or
popular book gets fused, and it sells just as any other mass market
paperback, of equal value to the university student as well as the
occasional reader.
All good books have one thing in common — they are truer than
if they had really happened, and after you’ve read one of them
you will feel that all that happened, happened to you and then
it belongs to you forever: the happiness and unhappiness, good
and evil, ecstasy and sorrow, the food, wine, beds, people, and
the weather (qtd in Hotchner, 2018).
Years ago, Hemingway had spoken on what we should look
for in fiction: an ability to speak for the times and concerns of
the people who read it. Perhaps it is time for us to go back to
tried and tested formulae and stop accepting distinctions created
and maintained by industrial concerns. The need to create a rift
and categorise literature into high and low is partly a capitalist
invention, and this needs to be recognised. The need of the hour is
to recognise the importance of democratising the politics of reading,
and insulating it against the fluctuations of political, economic and
social antagonism. We need to acknowledge the reader as the best
judge of the merits of a ‘literary’ work, and let them decide if it is
66 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

worthy of high tea discussions or just as a light read on the subway

train. Either way, it should be seen and received solely as literature,
without prior labels and expectations impinging on it.

Notes
1. Various versions of this story appear in scholarly circles. What
appears in the paper has been taken chiefly from two articles “He
wore a corset of durable whalebone” by Charlotte Hobson and
“A Case of Crime and Reward: Mystery Writer a Star in Russia”
by Peter Finn. The links to the articles are: www.telegraph.co.uk/
culture/books/3593380/He-wore-a-corset-of-durable-whalebone.
html. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2006/04/22/AR2006042201064.html
2. According to the “Nielsen India Book Market Report 2015:
Understanding the India Book Market.”
3. This data is taken from “India—Structural Adjustment Credit
Project (English)—Presidents Report”.
4. www.documents.worldbank.org. World bank. Retrieved
October 30, 2018.
5. Excerpt from Jhumpa Lahiri’s, “My Two Lives,” Newsweek World
News.
6. As reported in newschicagobooth.uchicago.edu/about/ewsroom/
press-releases/2014/2014-02-13.

References
Amis, M. (2001). The war against cliché: Essays and reviews 1971–2000.
Vintage.
Ashley, B. (1997). Reading popular narrative: A source book. Leicester
University Press.
Banks, J.A. & Banks, C.A.M. (2004). Handbook of research on multicultural
education (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Bloom, C. (2002). Bestsellers: Popular fiction since 1900 (2nd ed.). Palgrave
Macmillan.
Carroll, N. (1998). A philosophy of mass art. Oxford University Press.
Gelder, K. (2004). Popular fiction: The logics and practices of a literary field.
Routledge.
 Literary Fiction as Popular Fiction: Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s... 67

Gupta, S. (2016). Contemporary Indian commercial fiction in English.

In A. Tickell (Ed.), South-Asian fiction in English: Contemporary
transformations, (p. 139). Palgrave Macmillan.
Hotchner, A.E. (2018). Papa Hemingway: A personal memoir. Open
Road Media.
Lahiri, J. (2013). Interpreter of maladies. HaperCollins Publishers.
Lahiri, J. (2017). The clothing of books. Penguin Random House India.
Lamarque, P. & Olsen, S. (1997). Truth, fiction, and literature: A
philosophical perspective. Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press.
Luhar, S. & Choudhary, M. (2017). Constructing a new canon of post­
1980s Indian English fiction. Cambridge Scholars Publisher.
McCracken, S. (1998). Pulp: Reading popular fiction. Manchester
University Press.
Rafferty, T. (2011, February 4). Reluctant Seer [Review of the book
The Diviner’s tale]. New York Times Sunday Book Review. www.
nytimes.com/2011/02/06/books/review/Rafferty-t.html
Saricks, J. (2009). The Readers’ advisory guide to genre fiction (2nd ed.).
ALA Editions.
Williams, R. (1976). Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society.
Fontana/Croom Helm.
68 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Appendix A

Fig. 1: www.chipublib.org/interpreter-of-maladies-one-book-one-chicago­
fall-2006/

Fig. 2: http://www.pprize.com/BookDetail.php/Interpreter-Maladies
 Literary Fiction as Popular Fiction: Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s... 69

Fig. 3: http://www.climbthestacks.com/blog/2016/6/18/interpreter-of­
maladies-by-jhumpa-lahiri

Fig. 4: thinkerviews.com/books/english-books/popular/interpreter-of­
maladies-by-jhumpa-lahiri- book-review/
 3
Betwixt and Between: Giving the
Middle Its Due
Ojasvi Kala

Crawling out from the dark crevices of negligence, popular

commercial fiction now demands its dues. The main question then
arises is should we allow these dues to stack up or finally pay them
off? Why now more than ever? In this chapter, I choose to build a
hierarchical triad of the literary family in which I have interpreted
popular commercial fiction as the middle child of the literary family
by exploring what it is like to exist in the middle, shrouded in the
cloak of invisibility and humiliation, to be burdened under the
pressure of not being as brilliant and reputable as the eldest sibling—
“the revered classic”—the denizen of the world of literary artistry;
or fitting in with the “out-of-the-box” approach, the risk-taker, the
robust younger sibling, the popular. Looking at the literary world
as a family provides an insight into the psychological makeup of
its various categories which helps us in finding the microscope
under which we could analyse and understand the importance of
credit, acceptance, and acknowledgement of each other. A family is
only as strong as its members. What kind of individuals are formed
and shaped in a family where discrimination and biased behaviour
runs rampant? What I have tried to encompass in this research in
three sections is how the birth order affects the type of qualities
one acquires by the virtue of its place in the sibling hierarchy, and
 Betwixt and Between: Giving the Middle Its Due 71

how those same acquired traits shape one’s inner strengths and
weaknesses. Section II looks at how commercial popular literature
absorbs and uses these qualities of a middle child to survive in the
literary family. Section III concludes the discussion by responding
to the question of categorisation—if real distinctions truly exist,
or whether true nobility of literature lies in its blurred lines and
undefined worlds.

I
The existence of categories and divisions is a truth that has been
in play since the beginning of time itself. The need to form air­
tight compartments and to segregate things into carefully crafted
genres is a practice that is as closely rooted in human behaviour as
breathing itself. But the objective moral and rational validity of this
very subjective practice still remains in question. This practice of
categorisation constantly walks on the edge of the line on either side
of which lie the indicators of what is correct and what is incorrect.
Like every human and all man-made institutions, the academic
world also remains a faithful practitioner of categorisation. Like
one picks and chooses their outfit for the day, the academic world
also picks and chooses, from a literary closet the books and authors
worthy of respect and validation. As it often goes in practices like
these, some people get the better deal of the bargain and others are
stuck with leftover junk worth a penny or two.
The transition of the literary world into academic circles follows
the same procedures—some books, and some authors simply get
more respect and validation than others. But does it mean that
the discarded ones stand no fighting chance and shouldn’t be
celebrated for the virtues that they do have to offer? Absolutely not.
Credit should be given where credit is due. One such category in the
academic circles that faces discrimination since it is not considered
‘literary’ is popular commercial fiction. One doesn’t have to look
too far to prove the above-mentioned point. For instance, not so
long ago the University of Delhi was thinking about introducing
Chetan Bhagat’s novel Five Point Someone into the syllabus which
sparked many debates and discussions among the academicians and
72 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

students of literature alike. Most of the arguments asserted that the

decision to introduce a novel by Chetan Bhagat was an indicator
that the quality of education at the University of Delhi had taken a
turn for the worse. Other arguments that seemed in favour of this
decision justified their point by saying that the introduction of
Chetan Bhagat in the syllabus would help students in understanding
different kinds of creative writing and its merits. The rest were just
enraged by the very fact that a prestigious institute such as the
University of Delhi could even think about putting Chetan Bhagat
next to authors like Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens and William
Shakespeare. Interestingly, Agatha Christie in the mid-1900s was a
very popular writer churning out crime fiction by the dozen.
Despite various arguments and opinions that were given
regarding this decision, one thing that was common in all was the
blatant lack of respect and validation for an author like Chetan
Bhagat and his body of work which belongs to the category of
popular commercial fiction. Commercial literature, by its very
nature, is a genre well-liked by people and that is why it is also the
most successful. But despite its phenomenal commercial success,
it is still seen as ‘inferior kind of work.’ The hierarchy that exists
in the academic circles will be the first step of observation and
discovery in this thesis.
The sibling hierarchy affects not only the personality of a
person but also decides the lens and perspective one would be seen
and scrutinised with, in, and by the society. The birth order bestows
inevitably a person with certain virtues. Amongst the siblings, this
hierarchy creates a certain unsaid, yet strongly felt division of roles
and traits, both of which are used to assess their standing in the
family and the eyes of the parents.
The theory of birth order, proposed by Austrian psychoanalyst
Dr. Alfred Adler (1964), states how the order of one’s birth affects
the experiences and personalities of a person. According to him, the
elder child is typically responsible, confident and conscientious, is
a natural leader and is more likely to have authority over younger
siblings or take on the role of a surrogate parent. The middle child,
on the other hand, has a more difficult time finding a place of
 Betwixt and Between: Giving the Middle Its Due 73

significance in the family and thus becomes a natural peacemaker

and negotiator and is often popular and patient but is also most
at risk of being discouraged. The youngest born is charming and
impulsive, more likely to be a risk-taker, and often rebels as a way
of distinguishing themselves from their older siblings.
Adler rightfully observes that, “It is a common fallacy to
imagine that children of the same family are formed in the same
environment. Of course, there is much which is the same for
all in the same home, but the psychic situation of each child is
individual and differs from that of others, because of the order of
their succession” (1964).

The Eldest: The Classics

The eldest sibling is often regarded as the poster child of carrying
out and fulfilling the ambitions of their parents as well as their
own. The one who is the firstborn is also first both in order and
in consideration, repute, and social standing. She is the ideal. The
eldest sibling is the implementer of the law as well as the law itself.
Those books, which are held in high prestige or esteem in academic
circles as a result of their appeal transcending the bounds of time
and space, absorb the traits of the eldest child. Writings by Jane
Austen, Raja Rao, Chinua Achebe, Virginia Woolf, Mulk Raj Anand,
Anita Desai, and R.K. Narayan are classics that embody the virtues
of the eldest sibling. These are to be revered and respected, their
dominance over their younger siblings is unquestioned. They blaze
the path of success and take part in the important decisions that
not only influence the workings of the family but are responsible
for setting precedents and making history. Gora by Rabindranath
Tagore or Pather Panchali by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay are
the kind of books that occupy the top creamy layer, and act as the
watchdogs of the literary family.

The Youngest: The Popular Classic

On the other hand, the youngest sibling exists in the world of
relaxed rules and eccentric outlook, encouraged by its parents with
immense attention and freedom to be, and develop its quirkiness.
74 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

While the eldest sibling protects the family, preserving the laws
laid down by the literary family, with rigidity coursing through
its very veins, rebellion is what the younger sibling breathes. The
ferociousness with which it breaks the barriers set by the eldest
sibling, presenting ideas and talking about issues in a light too
bright for the regulations set by the eldest sibling, is what becomes
the source of its validity in the literary family. The youngest is
applauded, lauded, and pampered for the originality of its intellect.
Books like, The Satanic Verses (1988) by Salman Rushdie, God of
Small Things (1997) by Arundhati Roy, and Sexing the Cherry (1989)
by Jeanette Winterson fill in the shoes of the youngest sibling, their
writings become the new beginning and a fresh source of recognition
for the family. The essential element of the personality of these
books is not enveloped in their ability to amass an audience for
themselves or latch on to the bandwagon of ‘popularity’; rather it
is their originality of content and a discernably distinct perspective
that makes them stand out and adopt the role of the youngest
sibling.

Stuck in the Middle: Popular Commercial Fiction

While mockery slips from the tongue like butter, it is the practice
of unacceptance that pricks one like ill-fitted shoes responsible for
blisters. The catch remains that the middle child has to bear those
blisters as well as the knowledge of never belonging. The popular
commercial fiction is always kept at a distance, a humiliating
distance that marks its incapability in ever passing as ‘real writing’.
After all, it is not revered like its elder sibling, that has for so long
upheld the reputation of the literary family, been the law, and the
standard. Nor is it like the daring younger sibling, the intellectual
rebel, who bears the stamp of originality, and shocking revelations
that change a life. The predictability of popular commercial fiction
cannot compete with the repute or unprecedented paths of its
siblings. What does it have with it to show for itself amidst this
battle of dominance other than the linear formulas and simple
plots? The competition is rigged, and it seems that the middle child
isn’t even considered a contender.
 Betwixt and Between: Giving the Middle Its Due 75

Stuck between the two epicentres of its parents’ attention and

affection, it hides in the shadows, lost in the woods of obliviousness
before it even has the chance to find itself and make itself known.
Being in the middle is not easy; after all, it was Virginia Woolf
who in a 1930 letter said that the middlebrow is, “the man, or a
woman of middle bred intelligence who ambles and saunters now
on this side of the hedge, now on that, in pursuit of no single object
neither art itself nor life itself, but both mixed indistinguishably,
and rather nastily, with money, fame, power or prestige” (Popova,
2014).

II
“But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the
common humanity to pray for the sinner that needed it most?”
These lines by Mark Twain have often been used and ascribed to
devils, asking for their dues. Popular commercial fiction might be
the devil asking for its dues, but the question now that needs to be
asked is not ‘why’, but ‘who’? Who made it into a devil, standing
on the threshold of the academic world? The irony that tails behind
the popular commercial fiction is that it is not a devil that is to be
feared but the one that is to be mocked for his hideous, lacklustre
appearance. This devil doesn’t reside in the depths of hell, but
rather in the middle, the zone of invisibility and humiliation.
Everything that is in the middle is his, and frankly, there isn’t
much. Popular commercial fiction embodies, thus, the role of the
true middle child of the literary family.
The popular commercial fiction moulds itself in and around
the qualities of the middle child to survive the harsh scrutiny of the
rest of her family. To answer the question of ‘Why it is important
to give dues’, it is imperative for us to first understand and analyse
the question of ‘How popular commercial fiction uses the middle
child’s traits to survive and flourish’.

The Negotiator
Tangled in nameless chaos, the middle child becomes skilled in the
art of negotiation to gain attention and establish a presence in a
76 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

space where the things often come to her already divided between
the eldest and the youngest. Lines from the first noted woman poet
of America, Anne Bradstreet’s Prologue (1650) resonate with the
mentality with which popular commercial fiction tries and snakes
its way into the nooks and crannies of the literary family and readers:
To sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings,
Of Cities founded, Common-Wealths begun,
For my mean Pen are too superior things;
Or how they all, or each their dates have run,
Let Poets and Historians set these forth.
My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth.
Popular commercial fiction digs away, forming a niche away
from the looming shadows of its other two siblings based on a
promise, a promise of occupying a place away from the two
extremes of the spectrum. It never promised or promoted greatness,
to talk about heavy things that might lead your soul to question its
worth or open your mind to questions of life or existence. What it
promises include quick temporary fixes, stories that will not probe
your conscience long after they have ended but will entertain you
till the time you hold its pages between your fingers. Then why do
we rebuke it for not meeting the standards it never agreed to and
humiliate it for delivering what it has always promised?
The middle child often gets subdued, her voice left unheard
and unseen. Taking away the voice takes away one’s right to exercise
its agency and popular commercial fiction is no stranger to this
violation of its agency. Undermining the voice of the middle child
only leads to the stacking up of the dues, that will sooner than later
come down tumbling and take everyone with them. The security
and safety of expression that the popular commercial fiction is
denied amongst its family, reflects in the promise that it supplies its
readers with. Readers of authors like Chetan Bhagat, Durjoy Datta,
and Ravinder Singh are provided with an emotional safety that the
writers of the other two siblings could never promise their readers.
These novels appear in online discussion clubs, are found with
commuters in metros or in a woman’s handbag. Often, the book
 Betwixt and Between: Giving the Middle Its Due 77

cover will inevitably have a woman, or a child, or a mix of both, or

man and woman. Popular commercial fiction follows a particular
formula, a sure shot blueprint designed specifically for commercial
success, the stories of this genre are highly predictable, and in its
predictability, its readers feel secure. The readers know when they
pick up the middle child what they will be receiving, and they revel
in its transparency. The prerequisite knowledge of being able to
sail through a story emotionally unharmed also contributes to the
popularity of commercial fiction.
It is difficult to find a place in society, but it is more difficult
to sustain that position, which the commercial fiction has been
able to successfully negotiate and accomplish.

The Crutch
In between the two extremes, between the two poles exists the whole
world, somewhere in the middle. It seems like a rule of the universe
that anything that is in the middle becomes by default easier to
disregard and ignore. People talk about the beauty of the moon and
the charisma of the sun, not about the unnamed distances between
them. They are concerned about the beginning of a journey and its
destination, not the journey itself. The youngest are sensationalised
and the oldest are revered and those in between, lie forgotten.
The middle child holds the key to peace, a bridge to the two
extremes where its two siblings reside. And in keeping a link between
the two, it acquires the qualities of the two, the courage of the
youngest and the loyalty towards the rules of the eldest. The popular
commercial fiction might not incorporate the amalgamation of its
two siblings in the way one expects but modifies it to suit its own
needs. To bear the harsh critiques of its family, courage is needed
by both the writers of commercial fiction and its readers, to form
a shield against the literary pundits—the defendants of the ‘classics’—
and loyalty is required to maintain a strong devotion towards the
elixir that commercial fiction flourishes on.
A story without a middle is meaningless, as is a society without
the middle class. While the underprivileged class is used as the face
and force for the development of a country, and the one-percenter
78 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

elites seen as the desired goal, it is the middle class that bears the
burden of the economy of the society as well as its social and
political changes, and yet it is the least appreciated, the backbone
of the nation. The middle child of the literary family suffers from
the lack of acknowledgement of the various tasks it undertakes.
As published in The Hindu, the India Book Market Report
(2016) claims that India is the sixth-largest publisher in the world
overall, and the second-largest publisher in the world for English-
language books. What is further interesting is that contrary to
popular perception, on an average, Indians read around 2.1
books a week. According to World Culture Score Index, Indians
spend more time reading than their counterparts globally. In a
country that provides so much revenue to its publishing field,
the popular commercial literature becomes the main source of
income of the publishing sector. Taking the example of Chetan
Bhagat alone, the New York Times cited him as the “biggest selling
English language novelist in India’s history”, with him having
sold around seven million copies alone. As commercial popular
fiction booms and spreads, the financial gains increase as well,
bringing monetary gains to both the writers and the publishing
houses. These monetary gains also contribute to the sustenance of
writers of literary fiction.
Besides the economic crutch, commercial fiction is also used as
an emotional crutch, an ego booster for both the aspiring writers
and the established writers of literary fiction. The middle child
of the literary family is used as a measure of standards of what is
good writing and what is not often being associated with the latter.
For both the siblings, the middle child doesn’t exist as a separate,
individual entity but just as a point of validation of their own
excellence and position in the society.
No matter how high the classics hold their place in the academic
circles, in the popular market, it is the commercial fiction that takes
the front seat. Popular commercial fiction moves forward even as
the cold harsh breeze of derision hits it, numbing its authority
over its own field, and silently provides both an emotional and a
financial crutch to its family.
 Betwixt and Between: Giving the Middle Its Due 79

The role of commercial popular fiction as the crutch, while

being simultaneously disregarded as it having any real importance,
gives birth to an identity crisis. Am I worthy? Will acceptance ever
become my cup of tea or will I forever be ridiculed for my choices?
Questions like these plague both the producers and consumers of
commercial fiction. The effect of this identity crisis is visible in
the readers of popular commercial fiction, who even though large
in number are hesitant to proudly stand with the middle child.
This kind of treatment and the hostile environment regarding
popular commercial fiction creates a psychological impact in both
the creator and the reader, bringing their self-esteem down, while
further alienating the popular commercial literature as people
associated with it get termed as the ‘less refined’ readers and by
default, less intellectual.
In the race of thinking outside the box, one forgets the need for
staying inside the box and making use of its security. Commercial
fiction occupies the void of the box, left by its eldest and youngest
siblings, in the quest for originality. And by doing so, popular
commercial fiction establishes for itself a market. If everyone
confines themselves into a singular idea of originality won’t then
the true essence of originality be ultimately dismantled?
The middle child, that is commercial fiction, deserves its dues
because it has constantly given back to the populace. It might not
be the one to set trends but what it does manage to do is reach
people and inculcate within them the seed of reading. Certainly,
commercial fiction might not pose questions that might stir one’s
little grey cells, or set in motion the growth of its readers, but you
don’t climb stairs from the top down. Commercial fiction forms
the foundation for the readers of literature, grooming them, as they
make their way to the eldest and the youngest sibling. Commercial
fiction is for everybody even if it is not everybody’s. The dues are
thus, not a favour to the middle child but are indeed the commercial
fiction’s right. The acceptance that it couldn’t find inside its family,
it finds it in its readers. It is rather disheartening how stakeholders
of the academic world are unable to recognise the potential that
popular commercial fiction holds and the dignity it deserves.
80 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

III
Popular Fiction and Popular Commercial Fiction
Thin lines and subtlety are a part of the world of literature.
Similarly, words are its weapons and they do make a difference.
The word ‘commercial’ makes a whole lot of a bigger difference
than what might meet the eye. Even if the names seem similar, the
experiences which they offer, and encounter prove to be different.
The difference between popular fiction and popular commercial
fiction is the same that might exist between a second-born child
and a middle child. In the two-tiered sibling hierarchy, the second
child acquires the traits and the treatment similar to that of the
youngest child in the three-tiered sibling hierarchy.
Popular fiction as the second child enjoys the same attention as
that is given to the youngest sibling. In its writings, it goes above and
beyond the rules set by the ‘classics’, its validity in the family is not
just linked to its popularity amongst the masses but also its ability
to retain relevance over several generations. Shakespeare’s plays are
an example of popular and classic literature as well. An essential
difference that exists between popular and commercial popular is
the fluidity which popular fiction has, the fluidity in terms of its
status, that popular fiction can transgress into the category of classic
fiction as the classics can be popular. But commercial popular rarely
enjoy this fluidity. Lewis Caroll’s Through the Looking Glass (1871)
and Alice in Wonderland (1865), the James Bond spy thriller From
Russia with Love (1958) by Ian Fleming and the queen of crime,
Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) are included in
a course on popular literature in premier universities while books
like Three Mistakes of My Life (2008) by Chetan Bhagat or chick lit
by Advaita Kala or Surender Mohan Pathak’s racy crime fiction are
given a short shrift by the academia. One may ask if it is because
those in the former category have acquired the status of popular
classics which the latter might acquire in times to come; and also
because the latter are labelled commercial fiction and attract a vast
amount of lucre and are lapped up by the publishing industry. It
is true that commercial fiction, like a true capitalist state, is solely
 Betwixt and Between: Giving the Middle Its Due 81

concentrated on and centered around the needs of its reader base;

needs which when fulfilled bring in incredible profit and capital.
Commercial fiction thus is a people pleaser and this is seen in the
way social media platforms are being used for connecting with fans
and readers.
In order to understand the fine divisions that rule the world
of literature and govern the workings of the academic circles, I had
the opportunity to interview Mr. Karan Verma who is a young
national bestselling author of two novels, Jack & Master (2014) and
DHRUV (2020), both of which have garnered critical acclaim and
commercial success. The following is the transcript of the interview
conducted through the mode of an electronic conversation via
email.
Q. Ojasvi Kala: To begin with, where do you place yourself when it
comes to categorising your writing vis-a-vis this internal literary hierarchy
and your contemporaries?
A. Karan Verma: Well, that’s always been a trick question for
me, my publisher and even my readers. The Hindustan Times said
that my novels transcend across genres and categories. Both my
novels—‘DHRUV’ and ‘Jack & Master’ are commercially successful
but they also have a high literary quotient. They’ve been hailed
for their language as much for their entertaining storytelling. My
second novel ‘DHRUV’ which recently became a national bestseller
was widely hailed as a ‘classic on steroids’. So, it’s a classic love story
which talks of dharma and redemption, but it is also fast paced in its
narrative. I personally never think of categories when I am writing.
I think most of my contemporaries are very compartmentalised
in terms of genres and categories and they keep churning out new
works in the same genre to consolidate a base of readers. It makes
sense for them commercially, but I don’t subscribe to the same
viewpoint.
Q. OK: Do you feel that the writers of Indian Popular Commercial
fiction aspire to be known as serious fiction writers? And if so, does it by
default make Popular Commercial Fiction ‘non-serious’, distancing them
from the category of Popular Classics?
82 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

A. KV: I think some writers of popular fiction do indeed aspire

to be taken as serious literary writers. It comes from a space of
not embracing who you are. Somewhere in literary circles there
is a sense of demarcation between pop fiction and classic fiction.
That divide got pretty prominent in the last decade. I believe
this distinction exists in every art form, be it music, cinema or
paintings. Class Vs mass is here to stay but I believe they should be
able to coexist peacefully. Both sides have a version. I believe there
is sometimes a false sense of elitism amongst the readers of classic
literature where they look down on popular fiction even if it’s a
beautiful story, well-told. There are also times when popular fiction
is rightfully not taken seriously by the literati and that’s because
a lot of publishers have honestly stopped paying attention to the
quality of language and expression. In the name of popular fiction,
you can’t compromise on the purity of the language. Today we have
published authors who can’t converse in fluent English beyond five
minutes or write an entire page without any grammatical errors. So,
I think both sides need to walk a few steps to meet in the middle.
Q. OK: Do you feel that the writings and the writers of Popular
Commercial Fiction are judged harshly in intellectual circles? What,
according to you are the redeeming qualities that this particular genre has
to offer and the reasons for its commercial success?
A. KV: As I said, there are times when writers of popular fiction
are judged harshly in academic circles but I don’t think that’s fair.
Any artwork, if done with conviction, should be celebrated for its
individuality. Imagine how the world would be if we just had classic
fiction. Would classic fiction have its relevance intact if classics were
the only category? Also, writing a work of popular fiction which
captures the imagination of thousands of readers is an achievement
in itself which must be respected. Commercial success should always
be celebrated as long as the language quality hasn’t been completely
compromised. There could be better editorial processes in place but
let’s not try and kill someone’s individuality by undermining their
writing style. They have their share of qualities. Some of the popular
fiction writers have to be credited for perhaps understanding the
man next door better than some of the classic authors. They’ve told
 Betwixt and Between: Giving the Middle Its Due 83

stories and fleshed characters which are far more real and relatable
than a certain fictional construct of an elitist mind. This is their
redeeming quality and that is what perhaps set them apart. They’ve
also been able to market their work better than some of the literary
people. They’ve been rooted and hence they’ve walked the extra
mile for the success that they’ve earned commercially. A lack of
recognition by the academic circles also fuels them to work harder.
Q. OK: In today’s contemporary times do you think distinctions
can or should really exist when it comes to writing and writers? Are these
distinctions the true measure of the creative and intellectual capabilities
one inhabits?
A. KV: Personally, I don’t believe in categorisation too much.
I was told by my publisher that both my novels became national
bestsellers particularly due to the reason that they transcended
categories and genres. I do believe that demarcations exist as much
as I don’t subscribe to them. I don’t think they’re necessarily a
measure of someone’s intellect and capabilities. However, as a
natural reaction, one would always have a slightly higher regard
for a well-written classic work of fiction over well-written popular
fiction because of the regard for language, diction and expression.
I believe that one’s work should be an organic extension of
their individuality. In the pursuit of literary recognition, if one
compromises on that, then it would be a wasted effort and would
do no good to the cause of literature or the cause of popular fiction.

Can Distinctions Exist?

The conclusion brings us to answer the question of whether
any kind of distinctions can really exist in a literary world. The
divides in a literary family are like waves hitting the sand onshore;
sometime they seem as one, intermixed with one another, taking
and absorbing the essence of each other, and other times when the
wave recede you can make out the clear divide between the blue of
the ocean and the golden particles of sand.
Creativity cannot be restricted and bounded in a particular
section, because it is in its very nature to extend and expand.
Creativity doesn’t demand divides, it is the ego that does. Exceptions
84 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

are a rule of law. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling was a
commercial success and is a part of popular fiction as well and who
is to say it won’t become a classic some time in the future.
Real distinctions can only truly exist if permanence lies at the
core of literature, but literature is dynamic, and so are its readers.
And therefore, at the heart of every fiction and literature will
remain blurred lines and undefined terms, which is ultimately the
true source of its beauty and nobility.

References
Adler A. (1964). Problems of neurosis: A book of case histories. Mairet P.,
editor. Harper & Row Publishers, Incorporated.
Mishra, D. (2019). Authors are Vying with Pokémon and Taylor Swift:
Meghna Pant. The Hindu. https://www.thehindu.com/books/
authors-are-vying-with-pokmon-and-taylor-swift-meghna-pant/
article26606836.ece
Popova, M. (2014). The malady of middlebrow: Virginia Woolf’s
brilliantly blistering response to a patronizing reviewer.
Brainpickings. https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/11/05/virginia­
woolf-middlebrow/
Srivastava, P.K. & Madan, N. (2018) “Anne Bradstreet: The Prologue”
in Revisiting American Literature, 194-197. Macmillan Publishers
India Pvt. Ltd.
Shiach, M. (1989). Discourse on popular culture: Class, gender and history
in cultural analysis: 1730 to the present. Stanford University Press.
Storey, J. (2012). Cultural theory and popular culture (6th ed.). Routledge
Books.
Verma, K. (2014). Jack & Master. Rupa Publications.
____ . (2020). DHRUV: Love Story of an Alchemist. Rupa Publications.
 II
Romancing the Celluloid
 4
Bhojpuri Leisure: Popularity, Profanity
and Piracy1
Gautam Choubey

The emergent technologies of mass communication have a

significant bearing on the newfound visibility of Bhojpuri, both
in the Bhojpuri-speaking regions as well as at the national level.
Thanks to the cassette revolution of the late 1980s, single-screen
cinema houses in the mofussil towns across India, and, of late,
a YouTube-steered resurgence of the vernacular, Bhojpuri appears
stronger than ever. Since the 1990s, its claim for a distinct linguistic
identity has garnered greater sympathy. While its inclusion in
the eighth schedule of the Constitution or its recognition by the
Sahitya Akademi remains a distant cry, cultural theorists, folklorists
and language scholars appear to be inching towards a consensus
about the cultural strength of Bhojpuri. According to G.N. Devy
(August 4, 2017), the series editor of the People’s Linguistic Survey
of India, Bhojpuri is the fastest growing language in the world.
However, Devy’s assertion appears to be at odds with some of
the aspects of reality. Even a bird’s eye view of the literary scene
in Bhojpuri is sufficient to conclude that there has been, over
the past one decade, a sharp decline in literary output from the
region. The little magazine movement in Bhojpuri, which started
in the 1970s, has lost its steam and focus. Most of the Bhojpuri
publication houses have been shut and the Bihar government
88 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

aided Bhojpuri Akademi in Patna lies in shambles. In the light of

these specifics, one might presume that Devy was referring to the
Bhojpuri’s flourishing film and music industry, or perhaps to the
demographic fact that the language is spoken by almost 180 million
people across six countries. Thus, any scholarly engagement with
Bhojpuri culture or language must dwell at length on the post-80s
popular entertainment industry.
This resurgence of the vernacular, as Avijit Ghosh (2010) and
Ratnakar Tripathy (2011) have demonstrated in their judicious
assessments of the economy of Bhojpuri leisure, is driven by the
lower classes and fuelled by labour remittance of the migrants. The
economic dividends of labour migration, together with liberalisation
of the Indian economy, created a buffer of sorts that emboldened
the historically impoverished Bhojpuri speakers to spend a little
on entertainment. To a large extent, this explains the rise of the
cassette industry in the late 80s, the resurgence of Bhojpuri cinema
in the 90s and the advent of television channels such as Mahua
TV in the early 2000s. By way of providing a few new notes on the
constitution of the popular in Bhojpuri, the chapter proposes to
speculate on the challenges inherent in projects that seek to explore
the domain of mass entertainment. Inter alia, the chapter will also
endeavour to recast the very idea of ‘the popular’ in the context of
Bhojpuri.

Popular Vs What?
According to Raymond Williams (1983, p. 236), the term popular,
in its original Latin usage, referred to an idea or a thing that carried
with it, among other notions, the sense of being ‘base’ or ‘lowly.’ Over
the centuries, it has come to acquire a multitude of connotations—
from public-oriented to widely-recognised and from mass-produced
to mass-consumed. These connotations have been indicative of the
patterns of validation, production, circulation and consumption.
But in each case, that which is deemed to be ‘popular’ is contrasted
with its ‘high culture’ counterpart. Expressed differently, in the
absence of elite, erudite or high, popular becomes a null category.
However, in the context of Bhojpuri literature and culture, the idea
 Bhojpuri Leisure: Popularity, Profanity and Piracy 89

of popular posits challenges of a different order. Here, there is a

conspicuous absence of artifacts—literary, cinematic, architectural
or visual—which may be described as ‘elite’ or ‘cultured’. Of course,
there is the ubiquitous Madhubani painting, but in spite of all
its finesse and technical sophistications, it is still placed squarely
within the domain of the folk. It must be emphasised that the
said absence does not indicate a lack of innate merit or worth in
the cultural artifacts produced in the region. The neglect, which
the Bhojpuri speaking tracts of the country have suffered, both
in popular and academic estimations, accrues from several factors,
the exclusion of the language from the eighth schedule of the
Constitution being the principal among them. There are, at least,
five other problems that have seemingly turned the quest for ‘high’
cultural specimens of Bhojpuri into a wild goose chase.
First, the fact that there has been practically no attempt at
canon formation in Bhojpuri literature has proven exceedingly
disadvantageous to the said pursuit. Due to an overwhelming
preponderance of folk-centric studies, literary histories of Bhojpuri
have struggled to strike a balance between the contesting claims of
folk and modern literary forms. In Bhojpuri Aur Uska Sahitya (1957,
pp. 10-14), Krishnadev Upadhyay, arguing after Suniti Kumar
Chatterji, opines that Bhojpuri literature is predominantly ‘folk’
in nature and that it thrived in the form of folk songs and folk
theatre among illiterate villagers. For Upadhyay, all documented
literary expressions in Bhojpuri can be classified in one of the three
categories: sant sahitya, lok sahitya and aadhunik sahitya (devotional
literature produced by saint-poets, folk literature and modern
literature). His account, which is arguably the first systematic
attempt at writing a history of Bhojpuri literature, seeks to develop
categories which easily lend themselves to a chronology of sorts.
While folk literature is explored across six chapters of the text and
devotional literature across two, only one chapter is spared for
modern literature.
This has been the case with most attempts at writing history
of Bhojpuri literature, including those made by scholars such
as Uday Narayan Tiwari (1954), Tayyib Hussain ‘Peedit’ (2004),
90 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Jaikant Singh ‘Jai’ (2013) and Arjun Tiwari (2014). Each of these
narratives begin with Kabir (15th century) as the ‘Adi Kavi’ or the
first poet of Bhojpuri and then move on to the compositions of
Dharamdas (16th century), Dharni Das (17th century), Shiv Narayan
(18th century), Dariya Sahib (18th century), Lakshmi Sakhi (18th
century) and Bulakidas (18th century) and Tegh Ali (19th century).
With the exception of Tegh Ali, who was a member of the literary
circuit in Banaras that thrived around Bharatendu Harischandra
(1850-85) and published a volume of homoerotic Bhojpuri ghazal
titled Badmash Darpan (1895), the rest are saint-composers who
wrote mostly devotional poetry. Although George Abraham
Grierson (1851-1941) identifies Ravidutt Shukla’s play Devakshar
Charitra (1884) as one of the earliest recorded specimens of literary
prose, yet, in all the aforementioned accounts, the study of prose
is pushed to the post-independence period. Consequently, to an
average onlooker, Bhojpuri comes across as a language whose
attendant culture has thrived primarily in the domains of folk,
verse and the performative.2 This phenomenon, in all fairness, may
be phrased as the ‘tyranny of the folk.’
Second, as a result of this lopsided emphasis on folk expressions,
to most readers, researchers and critics, only two literary icons have
come to epitomise the essence of entire Bhojpuri literature. If one
excludes Mahendra Mishra (1886-1946) and Bhikhari Thakur (1887­
1971), both of whom come from the domain of the ‘folk’, not
much is known about the other literary figures. It is therefore no
coincidence that these two have come to command monographs in
Sahitya Akademi’s celebrated “Makers of Indian Literature” series.
Yet, paradoxically, both Mishra and Thakur are seen as somewhat
suspects within the Bhojpuri-speaking region. This complicates the
matter further. Among the Bhojpuri literati, Mishra has often been
disparaged for his scandalous personal life and his relationship with
the nautch girls of Chapra, Muzaffarpur, Banaras and Calcutta. In
a few of the early histories of Bhojpuri literature, he comes across
as a minor character. Besides, Mishra’s Bhojpuri Ramayan, his
rumoured magnum-opus, remains unpublished and is yet to see
the light of day. By contrast, the plays and song-dance routines of
 Bhojpuri Leisure: Popularity, Profanity and Piracy 91

Thakur, a man from the so-called ‘lower caste’ barber community,

are often seen as a lowbrow and crass forms of entertainment;
perhaps in the same league as the launda nach, the sultry dance of
cross-dressed boys, performed during weddings and other festivities.
To the scholars of Bhojpuri literature, the coexistence of these
two seemingly divergent-yet-intertwined approaches has yielded
baffling conclusions. The phenomenon has discouraged attempts
at judicious and holistic assessment of the two literary giants, let
alone other authors and genres. Consequently, Bhojpuri novelists,
story writers, essayists, etc. never received the critical attention they
deserved. This sizeable body of literature, which comprises at least
1000 works of prose, if not more, has failed to deliver a theoretical
model necessary to engage with Bhojpuri. Critical volumes on
Bhojpuri literature barely address the politics of writing or the
thematic and aesthetic variety in Bhojpuri prose.3
Third, with the exception of Uday Narayan Tiwari’s The Origin
and Development of Bhojpuri (1960) there has been no attempt
to write a history of Bhojpuri literature in English. This has
jeopardised scholarly pursuits undertaken by those scholars who
do not speak or understand the language. Further, it deserves to
be emphasised that Tiwari’s monograph is basically his doctoral
thesis which was written during the late 1940s and published nearly
a decade later, with minimal revision. Understandably, it is mostly
silent on the majority of literary issues and specimens in the post-
independence era. Moreover, a critical survey of Bhojpuri literature
constitutes only a small segment of Tiwari’s monograph, as his
primary focus is on language and grammar. Given the numerical
and cultural strength of Bhojpuri speakers, their regional diversity
and the emergence of Bhojpuri as an academic subject in both
school and higher education, the existing history appears both
dated and inadequate.4
Fourth, as argued earlier, there is a marked absence of
territorially defined cultural or literary referents that may be
termed as ‘high culture’ specimens. As a result, throughout
Bhojpuri-speaking tracts of India, which includes parts of Bihar,
Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, high
92 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

culture is often associated with Hindi. This has ramifications of

everyday life too. In the majority of Bhojpuri-speaking households
an unscripted-yet-omnipresent protocol of communication remains
in force. Everyday exchanges in Bhojpuri—unadulterated or mixed
with a smattering of Hindi—are restricted to interactions with
elderly women, mothers, grandparents and the working class. In all
other acts of communication, domestic or otherwise, Hindi is the
preferred medium of social intercourse. If one were to substitute
Bhojpuri with Maithili or Magahi, the code remains unchanged
as long as Hindi continues to be the dominant language in this
arrangement. Thus Bhojpuri, even among its native speakers, is
associated either with women or with classes that have minimal
access to education. In the context of Bihar, the two identities are
interchangeable, even though there is no plausible basis for such
an assumption.
Fifth, since both the languages share a common script and
have similar grammars, an average Bhojpuri speaker is competent
in Hindi, even though the opposite is seldom true. The majority
of Bhojpuri authors, including the most celebrated ones like
Rameshwar Singh Kashyap and Pandey Kapil, wrote with equal
felicity in Hindi. However, given the dismal market for Bhojpuri
works and a general reluctance on the part of the big publishers
to promote vernacular literature, many of them established their
own publishing houses and took to the subscription model for sale
of their books. Others switched to Hindi. This has caused much
trepidation and considerable damage to the reputation of Bhojpuri
literati. Even though the likes of Rahul Sankrityayan (1893-1963),
Shivpujan Sahay (1893-1963) and Hazari Prasad Dwivedi (1907­
1979) wrote in Bhojpuri, they are celebrated as Hindi authors and
their Bhojpuri writings or affiliations are conveniently erased.
The hegemonic presence of Hindi music and cinema operates
at several levels. Being the equivalent of high culture, it has become
the aspirational benchmark for Bhojpuri singers and filmmakers.
Even within the Bhojpuri-speaking regions of the country, Hindi
films assert themselves through their superior production budgets
and asymmetrically huge market share. The fact that even in
 Bhojpuri Leisure: Popularity, Profanity and Piracy 93

heartlands like Patna and Jamshedpur, Bhojpuri films rarely find

a screen in the multiplex speaks volumes about their subservient
position. This neglect has been one of the perennial grievances of
the Bhojpuri film fraternity, but the dominance of the Hindi films
goes much beyond, into the realm of affect too. Because popular
musicians generously cannibalise Hindi tunes and themes, the latter
manages to make easy inroads into Bhojpuri popular imagination.
While it is true that the practice of plagiarism and piracy have
significant economic implications for the Hindi film and music
industry, no Bhojpuri singer or filmmaker has ever been sued.5 In a
society that places much greater emphasis on cultural transmission
through oral songs and performing arts, no one really hankers
after legal questions of authorship and intellectual property rights.
However, such widespread piracy of ideas cripples creativity to a
great extent. Willy-nilly, Bollywood has come to define the aesthetic
contours of creativity in Bhojpuri cinema and music, just as Hindi
literature has always defined the scope of experimentations in
Bhojpuri literature. For example, titles of Bollywood blockbusters
such as Hera Pheri (2000), Shehenshah (1988), Border (1997), Biwi
No. 1 (1999) and Wanted (2009) have already been appropriated
in films starring Bhojpuri superstars like Ravi Kishan, Khesari Lal
Yadav, Nirahuwa and Pawan Singh. But the imitation does not stop
there. Not just the plots, but even the posters are loosely modelled
on the Bollywood originals. For instance, the poster of Bhojpuri
Border, starring Nirahua, shows him wielding the same bazooka
that Sunny Deol had wielded in the poster of the Hindi film. It
is possible to argue that by reminding their audience of the Hindi
blockbusters, these Bhojpuri films hope to capitalise on the success
of the originals. However, as a result of this constant mimicry, the
language has failed to develop its independent idiom and is often
under-appreciated or misjudged.

Calling Out the Obscene

To the majority of Indians, as also to a sizeable section of Bhojpuri
speakers, the idea of popular leisure in Bhojpuri corroborates with
their customary notions of crass, vulgar and obscene. An article
about Guddu Rangeela, published in The Print, an online news
94 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

portal that boasts of being led by “India’s most experienced and

respected journalists”, offers a case in point (Yadav, February 17,
2020). Rangeela or the colourful is the nom de plume of Guddu
Giri, a sensational Bhojpuri singer, best known for his ribald songs
on Holi and everything else. Sampling a handful of his lyrics, which
the author does not care to translate for the non-Bhojpuri readers,
the aforementioned article makes a set of problematic assertions—a
jumpy verdict and an unqualified generalisation—which make
ethnomusicological engagements with popular Bhojpuri songs,
such as the present paper, appear complicit in the project of cultural
debauchery, unless they are configured as a spirited denunciation of
the said subject. The following are two of the songs, which, according
to the article, purportedly represent “the world of Bhojpuri music”
and lay bare a “mindset obsessed with rape.”
Humra lehenga mein corona virus ghusal ba (corona virus has
crawled up my skirt)
Holi mein izzat nahi bachat ho (During Holi one cannot guard
one’s modesty)
To anyone familiar with the metonymic logic so very pervasive
in folk and popular songs, encounter with a notorious sub­
human species, mostly snakes and scorpions, is a metaphor for
female arousal or an outlandish amorous adventure. Perhaps the
most memorable illustration of the variety appears in Bimal Roy’s
1958 classic Madhumati wherein Vyjayanthimala and Dilip Kumar
pirouette to a song about scorpion-sting, penned by the legendary
Hindi poet Shailendra. Rangeela’s aforementioned song about the
notorious (read lecherous) virus, even though it blatantly disregards
the gravity of the global pandemic in its playfulness, draws upon
the same creative convention that has produced Madhumati’s daiya
re daiya re chadh gayo paapi bichhua (O’ mother, dear mother, I sense
the sting of that sinner scorpion).
As for the second song, the popular imagination, particularly in
north India, is replete with stories and ballads about sexual liaisons
that revolve around Holi, a festival synonymous with carnivalesque
license. Such expressions of forbidden love are characterised by an
 Bhojpuri Leisure: Popularity, Profanity and Piracy 95

aggressive assertion of desire, both male and female. If removed

from the context, these articulations appear threateningly proximal
to predatory sexual behaviour. For example, in the song aaj na
chhodenge bas humjoli (you will not be spared today, O’ beloved) from
the 1971 Shakti Samanta film Kati Patang, the hero, carrying a water
gun and accompanied by a bunch of drunken louts and comrades,
chases around a seemingly recalcitrant heroine. The white-sari clad
heroine, apparently a widow and therefore a constant mourner, is
not expected to participate in the colour-splurge. However, the hero
is in no mood to surrender to socio-religious mores and threatens
to drench her in colours, particularly her chunariya (stole) and her
choli (blouse). In yet another Holi song from the 2005 Amitabh
Bachchan starrer Waqt: The Race Against Time, the hero, evidently
frustrated with his coy mistress, urges her to cut to the chase and
says, “Do me a favour, let’s play Holi.” The heroine, instead of
dialling the police or calling out for rescue, simply teases him with
a mischievous repartee and warns, “Ja re ja (shoo off!), don’t touch
my choli.”
From Guddu Rangeela to Shailendra, from 1958 to the 21st
century and from Bhojpuri to English-mixed urban Hindi, the
fervour, the tenor and the imaginaries associated with Holi have
remained largely unchanged. Even though they do put on a slight
self-censure, these songs abound in narratives of frivolity and
tales of extra-marital or prohibited courtships. Furthermore, for
anyone who understands Bhojpuri or Hindi grammar, composing
such songs does not require them to be a Stephen Dedalus and
experience a moment of epiphany. Here is a non-exhaustive list of
words, which, when jumbled together with correct syntax, might
easily produce a Bhojpuri or Hindi song about Holi: choli, chunari,
bheega badan (soaked body), sali (wife’s sister, preferably younger
and unmarried), bhabhi (brother’s wife, of the same age as the
man, with a husband who lives in another city), bhang (cannabis),
biraj (Braj-speaking tracts of Uttar Pradesh, south-east of Agra, till
Banaras), gulaal (coloured powder), sari, yaar (in this case, a secret
lover), bhatar (husband), joban (youth or breast) and goriya (the fair-
skinned maiden).
96 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Such being the case and those being the overlaps and continuities,
one might feel impelled to ask as to why does a film like Madhumati,
with a song like that, end up with the Filmfare for best music,
while artists like Guddu Rangeela draw criticism, both national
and local? Why is it that a song such as chadh gayo paapi bichhua
gets broadcast on Doordarshan, the puritanical state-controlled
television channel, while Bhojpuri songs are barely telecast on
national TV, except when embedded in a Hindi film, a sitcom or a
documentary about Bihar? Further, how is it that the custodians of
public morality, such as the author of the aforementioned article,
make truce with raunchy Bollywood Holi songs that appear by the
dozens every few years, even as they continue to subject the world
of Bhojpuri music to the most acerbic of judgments?

Who is Afraid of Profanity?

If one ponders over the constitution of the vulgar in Indian
imagination, it is not hard to identify its sources in cinema and
music. The image of a woman in bikini or of a scantily clad vamp
gyrating seductively around a glittery dance floor readily comes
to mind. To the list one may add verbal profanity, scenes of love
making and even scatological humour. Within the liberal discourses,
there has been, of late, a normalisation of the vulgar. Such elements
are defended in the name of realism. This new wave of unpolished
realism in Indian cinema, pioneered by Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs
of Wasseypur (2012) and championed by numerous web-series ever
since, seems to revel in what is typically understood as vulgar.
It might sound too provocative an inference, but anyone
who has followed Bhojpuri films would attest to the fact that
most of the aforementioned sources of vulgar are either absent or
markedly subdued compared to the Bollywood mainstream films.
Even a cursory glance through some of the most provocatively
captioned music videos listed on Guddu Rangeela’s YouTube
channel would validate the aforementioned suggestion. While the
songs speak of tabooed issues such as forbidden love between a
woman and her husband’s younger brother, abortion and even
homosexual encounters between sisters-in-law, these incidents are
 Bhojpuri Leisure: Popularity, Profanity and Piracy 97

reported through the naïve perspective of a village bumpkin, who

struggles to make sense of his chance-discovery and blames his
queer finding on the zamana or society. Visually too, these music
videos are anything but explicit. In most of the music videos one
comes across the same set of dancers, attired in the same costumes
and huddled together in a corner of the same public park. These
dancers twirl mechanically and half-heartedly mime some of the
descriptions. Indeed these descriptions abound in innuendos and
double-entendre, but there is no denying that risqué has always been
the flavour of the folk and the traditional. Such double meaning
and suggestive compositions can be found in folk compositions
across India. Bhakti poetry too flourishes in erotic and suggestive
descriptions—at times, more explicit that the innuendos of Guddu
Rangeela. As Akshay Kumar (2015, pp. 187-88) argues, the elite
aversion to Bhojpuri leisure stems from middle class distaste for the
bawdy. Further, if features of the hegemon have their own allure
and trigger instant mimicry, aspects of a subjugated life invite ready
ridicule and derision. Since popular Bhojpuri leisure is anchored to
migrants and labourers, their cultural expressions and aesthetics are
seldom taken seriously.
In the light of the arguments and evidence promulgated thus far,
this chapter is a plea to reconfigure the positionality of the popular,
since here it lacks local high culture referents or elite patrons. One
needs to decode the constitution of a Bhojpuri speaker’s public
image and engage with the language and its heritage in absolute
terms. This requires forfeiture of filtered understanding.6 Besides,
any drive to over-sanitise a language that thrives on account of its
lower class patrons would have its own perils.

Notes
1. The author is indebted to Bharat Sharma ‘Vyas,’ Chandan Tiwari,
Vishnu Ojha, Munna Pandey, Ajit Choubey, Ratnakar Tripathi,
Anand Bharati, Animesh Mohapatra and Lalit Kumar for their
insightful observations and for sharing their experiences of
working with the Bhojpuri entertainment industry.
98 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

2. This approach neglects the fact that Bhojpuri prose writers

and dramatists like Rahul Sankrityayan, Gorakhnath Chaube,
Manoranjan Sinha, Awadhbihari ‘Suman’ and Mahendra Shastri
were at the prime of their creative careers during the 1940s.
3. It is interesting to notice that critical judgments are often guided
by considerations of caste. To many Bhojpuri critics, the rise
of the cult of Bhikhari Thakur, a man from the OBC (other
backward caste) community, is a matter of alarm. Such critics
focus on Mahendar Mishir, a Brahmin by caste, to ensure a
necessary reordering of the caste and literary hierarchy. In the
historical fiction Mahendar Mishir (1994), written by Ramnath
Pandey, Bhikhari Thakur is portrayed as a grateful disciple of
Mahendar Mishir.
4. The author of this chapter is trying to remedy the situation by
writing a history of Bhojpuri language, literature and culture in
English. But the completion of the said project, the way he sees
it, is more than one year away.
5. In a candid conversation with the present author, legendary
Bhojpuri singer Bharat Sharma ‘Vyas’ confessed that many of
the Bollywood composers have borrowed tunes and jingles from
his compositions, without seeking requisite permission from
him. However, he refused to term these practices as theft and
observed that ‘jaye deen, okani ke kamay khaye deen’ (Let it
be. Let them earn their livelihood). For in-depth analysis of the
practice of piracy, refer to the works of Ratnakar Tripathy (2011,
2012) and Peter Miguel (1993, 2014).
6. The present essay might have appeared too combative in its
drift. However, given the chronic misjudgments that the idea
of Bhojpuri leisure has been subjected to, by scholars and
commoners alike, it is a stance worth risking.

References
Bisht, R. (2017, August 4). Bhojpuri is the most rapidly developing language
in the world. Timesofindia.indiatimes.com. https://timesofindia.
indiatimes.com/blogs/twinkle-twinkle/bhojpuri-is-the-most­
rapidly-developing-language-in-the-world/
 Bhojpuri Leisure: Popularity, Profanity and Piracy 99

Ghosh, A. (2010). Cinema Bhojpuri. Penguin.

Kumar, A. (2015). Aesthetics of pirate modernity: Bhojpuri cinema
and the underclass. In Kaur, A. & Mukherjee, P.D. (Eds.), Art
and aesthetics in a globalizing world (pp. 185-204). Bloomsbusry.
Manuel, P. (2014). The regional north Indian popular music industry
in 2014: From cassette culture to cyber culture. Popular Music,
33 (3), 389-412.
Manuel, P. (2012). Popular music as popular expression in north India
and the Bhojpuri region, from cassette culture to VCD culture.
South Asian Popular Culture, 103, 223-36.
Manuel, P. (1993). Cassette culture: Popular music and technology in north
India. Chicago University Press.
Tiwari, U.N. (1960). The origin and development of Bhojpuri. Asiatic
Society Monograph.
Tripathy, R. (2012). Music mania in small-town Bihar: Emergence of
vernacular identities. Economic and Political Weekly, 47 (22), 58­
66.
Tripathi, R. (2011). Migration, money, music. Economic and Political
Weekly, 46 (46), 29.
Upadhyay, K. (1957). Bhojpuri aur uska sahitya. Rajkamal Prakashan.
Yadav, J. (2020, February 17). Bhojpuri singer Guddu Rangila can sexualise
anything—even corona virus and NRC. theprint.in. https://
theprint.in/opinion/pov/bhojpuri-singer-guddu-rangila-can­
sexualise-anything-even-coronavirus-and-nrc/366486/
 5
Feluda’s Serialised and Celluloid Selves:
A Tale of Literariness and Patrilineal
Legacies
Arunabha Bose

Ray’s suave and debonair detective, Pradosh Chandra Mitter alias

Feluda who is always accompanied by his cousin, Topshe and
thriller writer Jatayu, has both Bengali and English antecedents.
Niharranjan Gupta’s hypermasculine and anglicised Kiriti
Roy, who comes closest to being a colonialised replica of
Holmes; Narayan Sanyal’s Sherlock Hebo, a decolonised parody
of Conan Doyle’s hero and of course Byomkesh Bakshi were
formative influences for Ray’s private eye. Unlike Byomkesh’s
world populated by malevolent infidels, scheming coquettes,
dissembling interlopers, illegitimate sons and adulterous
aristocrats, Feluda’s world is decontaminated. Not only does
Feluda “preserve childhood so that the moral universe remains
incorruptible and phallocentric” (Chowdhry, 2015, p. 109), but
also protects dependent old men. Feluda is a child of the empire, a
product of colonial education whose self-identification with alien
culture goes beyond his anglicised last name, Mitter. Seized by
new found passion for “Old Calcutta ‘’ (Ray, 2015, p. 546), Feluda
decides to research its founder Job Charnock while lamenting the
fading of a unionised and plebianised Calcutta’s colonial glory
in Gorosthane Sabdhan (first published in 1977). As a pedagogue,
 Feluda’s Serialised and Celluloid Selves: A Tale of Literariness... 101

the dizzying array of Feluda’s knowledge ranging from the

history of criminology in Europe to the formal intricacies of the
thumri, attest to Ray’s own belief in an asymmetrical alignment
between schooling and education. However, Feluda’s suspicion
of institutionalised structures becomes a thematic leitmotif; since
his investigation too explores alternative, unorthodox and non-
institutional avenues of decoding, thus re-establishing the age-old
and well entrenched tension between institutional authority and
individual agency.
Bengali popular literature predating Feluda was often centred on
undisclosed secrets and thus titled Kechha or Guptakatha (scandals/
secrets). Such “Literature of Sensation” showed an overt reliance
on obscenity by narrating adventures of incest, adultery and other
forbidden illicit acts as in Haricharan Ray’s London Rahasya (1871)
and Kaliprasanna Chattopadhyay’s undated Haridashir Guptokatha.
(Biswas, 2013, p. 66). The “sanitisation” we find in Feluda can be
seen as a cultural response to such scandalous literature. The fallen
and unregenerate bhadralok of Byomkesh Bakshi adventures is
recuperated and the boy-reader is introduced to a purified world
of polite culture. Sanitisation and gentrification is part of Ray’s
protonationalist project of creating a new cultural identity through
Feluda’s sanctimonious morality. Ashis Nandy accuses Ray of
mimetically simulating the “Victorian crime-thriller” in creation of
an enclosed world clearly demarcated between good and evil, which
is a “new configuration of the predictable and familiar lacking
all semblance to leisurely and laboured-development of settings
in his serious films” (Nandy, 1995, p. 152). But not only is there
moral deviance but also deviation in terms of generic compliance
in Ray’s “non-serious” fiction. Feluda narratives exhibit significant
structural complexity; Sonar Kella (first published in 1971) runs
along three structurally distinct axes of investigation—kidnapping,
forgery and attempted murder. Similarly Joy Baba Felunath (first
published in 1975) involves unravelling three concentrically
enclosed mysteries—Machchli Baba’s charlatanism, Ambikanath’s
riddle and Maganlal’s thievery, each strand contributing to the
narrative’s piecemeal nature.
102 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Fictional World Through the Child’s Eyes

The world despoiled by crime is at odds with political changes
and impervious to chronological operations of history; it remains
mummified in pristine, archaic plaster and Feluda as paradigm of
virtuous maleness has a moral imperative to rid the world of malaise
through social surgery. The closing of ravaged old Calcutta theatres
in Apsara Theatre Mamla (1987) and the fading away of silent
film actresses from public memory with the coming of talkies in
Shokuntalar Konthohar (1988) are the only imprints of temporality.
Feluda as a glorified intellectual mercenary frequently uses his
magajastro (mental weapon) but rarely has occasion to use his British
Colt revolver since in Ray’s moral universe, crime is contained
within permissible aesthetic limits of cultural acceptability. The
moral architecture of crime fiction and its fictional topography
depend on euphemistic procedures like voyeurism and scopophilia.
However, Ray’s veiled conservatism and puritanism in fiction
remain at odds with the liberal progressiveness of his own agnostic
upbringing as well as with this moral architecture.

Feluda as Holmes Duplicate and Ray Surrogate

Feluda’s fiftieth year was celebrated jointly, by an event marked
by the release of Sandip Ray’s crime thriller detective film Double
Feluda (2016) and publication of Boria Majumdar’s collection of
anecdotal snippets, Feluda at 50 (2016), brought out by Harper
Collins; even though Feluda remains irreversibly transfixed in
eternal youth on pages like the bachelor Holmes. Feluda’s eclectic
reading mirrors Ray’s own intellectual eccentricity and like Ray,
he too lost his father at a tender age. Feluda’s anglicised last name
“Mitter”, a corruption of nativised “Mitra ‘’ was akin to his maker’s
anglicised “Ray”. Perhaps Feluda grew outside the pages of Sandesh
to evolve into Ray’s last and most autobiographical cinematic alter-
ego, the Uncle in Ray’s last film Agantuk (1992). Like Feluda, the
Uncle, Manmohan Mitra in Agantuk is a polymath, a bachelor,
similarly impatient with postcolonial educational models he leaves
home and his Tagorean syncretic internationalism is reminiscent
of Feluda’s cosmopolitan humanism. Feluda stories are a
 Feluda’s Serialised and Celluloid Selves: A Tale of Literariness... 103

simulacrum of Holmesian patterns. Uncle Sidhu, a vanguardian

figure for the genteel anglicised bourgeoisie who exercises his
grey cells in an arm-chair bound fashion resembles Mycroft. The
methodological antagonism between him and Feluda is evident
in Sonar Kella (1971), Sidhu’s preoccupation with criminology in
the circumscribed sphere of intellection shows a forensic approach
to deduction while Feluda being a “man of action” depends on
circumstantial evidence and discursive rationality. Feluda’s arch-
nemesis Maganlal Meghraj serves as his double just like Moriarty
serves as Sherlock’s. In Londone Feluda (1989), Feluda visits Baker
Street to pay homage to his “guru”. Napoleaner Chitthi (1981)
playfully refers back to Holmes’ Adventure of Six Napoleons (1904).
Unlike Chief Inspector Lestrade in the Sherlock Holmes series who
is subjected to gentle ridicule; the cerebrally flawed but virtuously
intact Inspector Srivastava in the Feluda series is governed by
an incorruptible morality to inspire a healthy respect for state
bureaucracy amongst the young adolescent readership. Bureaucratic
denseness of perception is thrown into sharp relief by Feluda’s
cerebral penetration of circumstantial evidence. However, his
genial and fraternal accord with bureaucracy shows little evidence
of Holmes’ haughty disdain. In fact, the social evolution of crime
fiction in Bengal exhibits a reverse teleology from its European
counterpart. While the “Police Procedural” is a late entrant in
European canon; in Bengal, the earliest detective to arrive on the
scene was a colonial era bureaucrat serving in the Calcutta Police,
in Raibahadur Priyanath Mukhopadhyay’s Darogar Daptar (1894).
The “Police Procedural” in its use of bureaucratic machinery and
state apparatus is sceptical of the “unlawful” and anarchic impulse
of the transgressive private eye governed by a purely personal
morality.

Meta-Textual Literary Melange—Popular Fiction Within

Popular Fiction
Although Ray borrows the structure of the crime fighting
trio from Hemendrakumar Roy’s Jayanto-Manik series; the
invention of Lalmohan Ganguly alias Jatayu, a caricaturised
104 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

writer of sensationalist thrillers serves as Ray’s most extensive

meta-commentary on the formulaic nature of popular fiction.
Ray’s preoccupation with intertextuality of literariness sees him
creating Feluda’s doppelganger in the form of Jatayu’s fictional
hero, Prakhar Rudra. Ray creates a battle between Jatayu’s
factually erroneous “lowbrow” popular-fiction and his own
“highbrow” popular-fiction. Ray creates an infinitely wide-ranging
metafictional structure which incorporates all possibilities that
the thriller genre is capable of producing. Ray makes the reader
aware that Jatayu’s fiction is just one version of the thriller. Using
Shlovsky’s idea of defamiliarisation, one can say that Ray throws
the conventional thriller and its established structures into sharp
relief by exhibiting the predictability and consequent banality of
Jatayu’s “lowbrow” thriller. Ray’s own “defamiliarised” thriller
dislocates readerly expectations by introducing random variables
to challenge generic compliance and in so doing, simultaneously
confirms and differentiates its relationship with the thriller genre
that Ray inherited. This double-bind is evident in the alliterative
resonance Feluda stories such as Gangtoke Gondogol (1970) and
Kailashe Kelenkari (1973) bear to Jatayu’s novels—Saharaye Shihoron
and Honduruse Hahakar.

Detective as Postcolonial Intellectual

As a surrogate for Ray, Feluda both embodies and articulates a post-
independent cultural modernity that the Tagore and Ray family
helped establish in Kolkata. His intellectual formation is patterned
on European modes of intelligibility, mimicking Anglo-European
habits of thought and action with a clear demarcation between the
mind and the body. “Ray’s popular-fiction places much emphasis
on scientific rationality which is identified entirely with Bacon’s
inductionism and empiricism.” (Nandy, 1995, p. 153) As a rahasya
bhedi, he euphemistically “penetrates’’ secrets with phallocentric
aggressiveness but the all-seeing “eye” becomes inexplicably myopic
due to a culturally induced gender blindness. He personifies
a bourgeois prudishness in matters of female sexuality. He is
culturally aligned with the stereotypical bhadralok; impersonating
 Feluda’s Serialised and Celluloid Selves: A Tale of Literariness... 105

the Europeanised mannerisms, intellectual hubris and colonialised

sensibility of the anglicised, leisurely and moderate intelligentsia.
His hybrid “Anglophone” cultural inheritance is evident in his
breakfast routine, a combination of khichuri (Indian porridge) and
omelette; he is as much at ease in a kurta as he is in a tweed coat.
As a preserver of colonial life forms and relics, it became Feluda’s
business to retrieve colonial legacies in Tintorettor Jishu (1982),
Napoleoner Chitthi (1981) and Robertsoner Ruby (1991). “He is a
crypto-nationalistic, somewhat Anglophiliac intersectional figure
who represents target audience’s cultural roots and existentialist split
in the throes of its modernist desire to renegotiate the boundaries
and entanglements of a transcultural melange” (Chakrabarti, 2012,
p. 261). Feluda’s mimetic response to modernity is however less
straightforward since his bachelorhood is the most radical rejection
of the Bengali mode of socialisation. Like the Uncle in Agantuk
(1992) he is an undomesticated, peripatetic, cosmopolitan flaneur.
His choice of a native brand of cigarette Charminar, Bata footwear
and fondness for Thumri based radio programmes show a conflicted
postcolonial response to demands for a “Nativised” sleuth. In his
deductive approach, the Eurocentric empirical-rational approach
and oriental theosophism relying on intuition and spirituality are
not irreconcilable polarities but complementarities. Sonar Kella
(1971) sees him investigating the academic merits of parapsychology
while Gorosthane Sabdhan (1977) finds him attending a séance to
summon the spirit of Thomas Godwin. Feluda shows postcolonial
modernity’s chronological ambivalence as he is a traditionalist
in the true bhadralok sense, embodying a romanticised post
enlightenment individualism. He prefers the meditative mode of
ratiocination over technologically oriented forms of criminological
investigation.

The Detective as Pedagogue

Ray’s Goenda (gumshoe) is not an unchanging epistemological
monolith like the hypermasculine hard-boiled detective Kiriti Roy
based on thrillers of Hammett and Chandler or the domesticated
Satyanweshi “Truth-Seeker” Byomkesh Bakshi. He is a pedagogue,
106 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

a travel enthusiast, a proof reader of manuscripts and a collector

of nostalgia and archaeological artefacts. Sunil Gangopadhyay
borrows this trope of the Detective-as-Polymath in the creation of his
archaeologist turned mystery solver, Kakababu. However, one can
trace the literary pedigree of this polymath figure to Premendra
Mitra’s Ghanada, a gifted raconteur with a prodigious ability to
spin yarns customised to satisfy a Bengali readership and entertain
an audience exclusively composed of young boys. Mitra’s unique
generic fusion of the bhromon kahini (travel writing) with rahasya­
romanch (mystery and thriller) form a seminal influence on the
generic evolution of the Feluda series. Be it uncovering the deceptive
mystical charades of “Society for Spook Studies” in Gorosthane
Sabdhan (1977) or the charlatanism of the mountebank Machchli
Baba in Joy Baba Felunath (1975), Feluda shows an unswerving
commitment to interrogating conventional orthodoxies through
his ratiocinative penetration. While extolling the educational merits
of the Feluda series for readers of all ages, Ray’s aunt and noted
writer of children’s literature, Leela Majumdar highlights Feluda’s
social functionality as an active pedagogue as contributing to its re-
readability. “Readers of all demographics can utilise the purposeful
and pragmatic education gleaned from Feluda’s academic monastery
in their own lives” (Translation mine) (Majumdar, 1995, p. 1). Even
within Feluda’s fictional universe, we see an epistemological conflict
between Ray’s brand of popular fiction having a premeditated
cultural capital and Jatayu’s consumer-driven sensational exploits
having a purely market value. A Bhadralok ideological economy of
knowledge production is at play in the Feluda series. Ray’s project
is to strategically mould the Bengali child through his personal
version of a non-conformist and subversive pedagogy which is
experiential in praxis and ethical in its objective. A forbidding figure
of masculine uprightness, Feluda is seen disciplining the truant
child Ruku in Joy Baba Felunath (1975) and correcting Topshe’s
reading habits by substituting the popular juvenilia literature he
consumes—Tintin in Tibet with a book on Egyptian pyramids,
Chariots of the Gods in Kailashey Kelenkari (1973). The child-reader
for Ray was an uncontaminated subject of Romantic humanism
 Feluda’s Serialised and Celluloid Selves: A Tale of Literariness... 107

and an unfinished project of Enlightenment rationalism which

was spearheaded in Bengal by the Ray family’s “Brahmo Samaj”
oriented radicalism. Feluda’s idiosyncratic scholarship was gleaned
through often unconventional and heterodox methods, firmly
in consonance with Ray’s hermeneutic suspicion for officialised
methodologies and tautological conventions. Topshe, the prototype
of the idealised Bengali boy-reader (duplicated in successive
Bengali fiction such as Leela Majumdar’s Gupi and Panu as well as
Ashapurna Devi’s Tapa and Madana) is an unsuspecting audience
for Feluda’s intellectual somersaults. Topshe finds the informal
and liberated arena of Feluda’s broad ranging and interdisciplinary
schooling more instructive than the formally circumscribed world
of stagnant school curriculum.

The Detective as Bhadralok Adventurist

One of the most enduring attractions of the Feluda series is Ray’s
immaculate description of places. Ian Fleming’s James Bond
regularly visits exotic and oriental tourist destinations designed
to tickle the voyeuristic fantasies of consumer-readers interested
in “luxury travels” but transfixed in unexciting places. Feluda,
on the other hand, became the insightful, erudite and eloquent
brand-ambassador for pan Indian “budget tourism” designed to
specifically appeal to the travelling gene of middle-class Bengali
families. “The Bengali boy-reader wants to be related to the
cosmopolitan-universal man; plunge into the whirlpool of events,
relish excitement and drown his senses in perpetual novelty” (Sen,
2015, p. 126). Ray frequently whets the bourgeois readers’ appetite
for travel by describing hospitality of budget hotels like Circuit
House in Jodhpur, Clarks Awadh in Lucknow and Calcutta Lodge
in Varanasi. While the average tourist needs a guide to navigate
Bhoolbhulaiya, the maze inside Imambara in Badshahi Angti (1966),
Feluda alone knows a way out of it; thus structurally prefiguring his
precocious ability to plod through an intricate lair of subterfuge.
In Kailashey Kelenkari (1973), he leaves the tour guide behind to
climb atop a rock offering a panoramic view of Aurangabad; again
thematically hinting at the detective’s panoptic ability to look at
108 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

the puzzle as a whole where others see disjointed and unconnected

fragments. A further identification between Topshe and his real
life surrogate, Ray’s own son Sandip was borne out by the fact
that most of Feluda’s adventures take place when his unageing
cousin, Topshe is enjoying his Puja holidays. The bhromon bilashi
Ray family often planned their annual vacations around pujor chuti;
thus underscoring the autobiographical nature of Feluda stories
and exposing the subjectivity of the traveller-narrator. Sandip
Ray writes that, “Most of the locations where the Feluda stories
unfold are places which Baba himself visited at some point. We
often travelled to Puri during our Puja holidays, something that’s
responsible for the genesis of Hatyapuri (1979)” (translation mine)
(Ray, 1995, p. 198). Sandip Ray’s insistence on Ray’s eye-witness
account emphasises a mode of “travel writing” which prioritises an
accurate relay of information over offering a vicarious thrill. The
opening vignette of Sonar Kella (1971) shows Feluda’s fascination
with the globetrotter Umesh Bhattacharya and in the course of the
novel we find a partly academic contest between him and the fake
globetrotter Mandar Bose. Inauthenticity in recording one’s travel
accounts seems akin to a crime in Feluda’s world.
Todorov finds a thematic percolation between the adventure-
thriller and travel-narrative: “The thriller’s tendency towards the
marvellous and exotic brings it closer on the one hand to the travel-
narrative, and on the other, to contemporary science fiction” (1977,
p. 48). Ray reconstituted the young adult genre of Bengali detective
fiction by shifting the structural elements of the narrative from a
whodunit to a thriller. This is partly because Feluda’s evolution
on the pages of Ray’s family magazine Sandesh was in constant
interaction with his celluloid reincarnation in Sonar Kella (1974)
and Joy Baba Felunath (1979). The cinematic afterlives of Feluda;
with the original actor Soumitra Chatterjee being replaced by a
younger Sabyasachi Chakraborty and even younger Abir Chatterjee,
find him flexing his leg muscles more than intellectual muscles.
Feluda’s scopophilic mastery of topography, his cultural penetration
of average tourist sights to “unravel” and “demystify” a cultural
ecosphere and in the process defamiliarise a popular location whose
 Feluda’s Serialised and Celluloid Selves: A Tale of Literariness... 109

attractions are foreclosed to the myopic average bhadralok tourist

make him an expert “eye”. One can see here an interplay between
Feluda’s vacational dimension and his professional attributes as a
vigilante. Underpinning Feluda’s perspectival unambiguousness
is Ray’s meticulous “eye” for ethnographic, historiographical and
archaeological details; the private eye’s unerring perceptiveness
complements and corroborates his perspectivity. From cultural
encounters with an unfamiliar terrain in Joto Kando Kathmandute
(1980), picaresque adventures around Jodhpur in Sonar Kella,
a hunting expedition in the forests of Burma in Royal Bengal
Rahasya (1974) to terrifying nightly vigils to forgotten Park Circus
cemeteries in Gorosthane Sabdhan (1977), Feluda stories show a
perplexing generic indeterminacy. They straddle heterogeneous
genres of bhraman kahini (Travel Narrative), shikar kahini (Hunting
Tale) and rahasya ramancha (Mystery and Thriller). The feasibility
of an uneven rapprochement between these genres is evident in
Ray’s conscious duplication of the literary mode of colonial hunter-
writers, Corbett and Kenneth Anderson in describing the hunt for
a man-eater in Royal Bengal Rahasya (1974). Ray fuses Todorov’s
first story (story of crime) and second story (story of investigation);
Royal Bengal Rahasya (1974) in insistently drawing attention to its
constructedness as a crime-thriller suggests that the second story
is the writing of the book itself. This traps the audience not only
in whodunit’s guessing game (movement from effect-to-cause as
we retrospectively rearrange clues) but also suspense (movement
from cause-to-effect as Feluda steps right into the murderer’s den).
Unlike the whodunit, here the Detective-Noir hero is not immune
to being harmed himself.

Patrilineal Legacies
While the cast of clients in Byomkesh is largely homogeneous; a
crumbling feudal order of cuckolded or decadent aristocrats, be it
Kumar Tridibnarayan Roy in Seemanto Heera (1934) or Maharaja
Ramendra Singh in Raktamukhi Neela (1937), Feluda stories have
a more heterogeneous assortment of characters such as stage-actors
in Apsara Theatre Mamla (1987) and college street booksellers in
110 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Sonar Kella. The coded message for recovery of lost treasure in

Royal Bengal Rahasya (1974) that Mahitosh gives Feluda is solved
first by his secretary Torit, a member of the lower bourgeoisie
resulting in a symbolic subaltern assault on aristocratic privilege.
However, Torit only solves it partially; the final closure rests with
the bhadralok detective who restores and preserves the idylls of
aristocratic superiority. One can in fact, see gender recontextualised
as narrative positions—the “male” detective is immune to display
of nervousness and is unexcitable. His resistance to panoptic self-
disclosure and halo of guarded secrecy makes him an enclosed,
integral and autochthonous subject. Jatayu’s public displays
of nervousness, vulnerability and exhilaration meanwhile have
the effect of feminising him; moreover his frequent relapses
into exaggerated bathos at the “loss of plot” have the effect of
intellectually emasculating him. The Feluda stories work within
a self-imposed phallocentric orbit populated with benevolent
patriarchs, whimsical widowers, indolent sons and prospect-hunting
young secretaries and tenants. The stolen artefacts, be it the jewel-
encrusted snuffbox or Aurangzeb’s ring or Sher Shah’s sword are
passed along exclusively male lines of inheritance. In Royal Bengal
Rahasya (1974), the widower and famed shikari, Mahitosh Sinha-
Roy and his bachelor brother Devtosh Sinha-Roy are descendants
of the Rajputana clan who live with the unmarried estate caretaker
Shashanka Sanyal and a young secretary Torit. The Ghosals in Joy
Baba Felunath (1975) are old aristocracy from East Bengal having
curiously feminine names; the ineffectual patriarch Ambikanath
lives with his only son Umanath, an errant grandson Rukmini
and a dependent secretary Vikas Sinha who has to contend being
the truant heir’s unwilling playmate. While there is an ideological
complementarity between the male members of urbane gentility,
there is a veiled cultural antagonism between the “unworthy”
biological heir who is disinherited and the detective-as-interloper.
Finally, it is the detective, who is rewarded with the custodianship
of the intergenerational family heirloom, be it gold coins in Royal
Bengal Rahasya or the jewel-encrusted Ganesha statue in Joy Baba
Felunath (1975). Feluda becomes Ambikanath’s secret keeper,
 Feluda’s Serialised and Celluloid Selves: A Tale of Literariness... 111

having solved the cryptic riddle jointly created by grandfather and

grandson while Ambikanath’s traditionalist and unsuspecting son
is excluded from the genealogically transmitted brain-teaser. One can
see this as ‘male homosocial desire’; Eve Sedgewick’s strategically
appropriate and deliberately unsuccessful attempt to separate the
desiring from the social. Feluda’s “secure masculinity is troubled by
rivalrous homosociability which in turn is troubled by homoerotic
desire; starting from base-level masculinity (libido), it moves up
through the culture of homosociability (ego), to the sublimation
of desire (superego)” (Edwards, 2009, p. 37). Feluda’s birth on
the pages of Sandesh, the family magazine started for young adult
readers (read boys) by his grandfather, Upendrakishor (author of
Goopy Gyne, Bagha Byne), published by the family press U. Ray and
Sons, passed onto his gifted father, Sukumar (author of Carrollean
nonsense verse Abol Tabol) and revived by Satyajit for his young son
Sandip is a patrilineal legacy in itself, bequeathed to male inheritors
within the Ray family.

Detective as Archaeologist and Anthropologist

Through Feluda’s metaphorical “digging”, unarchived and forgotten
histories of Anglo-Indian settlers in Calcutta are recuperated. He
traces family antecedents through discontinuities and disruptions
of colonial history to recover an antediluvian Anglophone world
lost to the modern reader. In fact, in Kailashey Kelenkari (1973),
he turns into a real archaeologist as he restores stolen specimens
from the Ellora caves, thus facilitating a historical cultural revival.
He is a compulsive visitor to Bourne and Shepherd (second oldest
photographic studio in Calcutta) and Park Auction House. His
urban archaeological enterprise is, on one hand, revisionist as it
unsettles particular forms of postcolonial knowledge disseminated
through Asiatic Society journals that Sidhu reveres. At the same
time it is also reparative, as Feluda mends familial discord between
the widowed fathers like Subir Datta in Golokdham Rahasya (1980)
and Markus Godwin in Gorosthane Sabdhan (1977) and their
errant progenies, who are unmindful of chequered family history
and legacy of bequest. Feluda thus offers “closure” both to the
112 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

whodunit narratives and families. Male disharmony not only

jeopardises family stability but creates ripples in the continuum
of life itself. By means of acquiring the antiquarian diary of
Charlotte Godwin (only female-owned heirloom in the Feluda
stories) and cryptic journals of blinded biochemist Nihar Datta (to
be published by Penguin), Feluda is able to retrieve the sedimented
corpus of public history such as the imperial history of the first
restaurant in Chowringhee through a personalised inventory
of memory. He transforms a purely self-directed inscription of
memory into a social utterance. Ray’s fascination with diaries,
evident in his short film Pikoo’s Diary (1980), can be traced to his
childhood since he discovered his own father through Sukumar’s
playfully abstruse diaries, having lost him at the age of two. While
the detective’s reading of the clue is a duplication of the readerly
experience in a whodunit, Ray replaces the sequentiality of narrative
disentanglement with simultaneity. There is a threefold repetition
in the act of uncovering the narrative strand since three writers of
whodunits—Jatayu, Topshe and Ray himself are retelling the same
chain of revelation. Ray’s restrained style is parodied by Jatayu’s
description of murder in Varanasi in The Mystery of the Elephant
God as “blood on white rabri turning it pink” (Ray, 2015, p. 420),
thus showcasing infinite reproducibility of the “singularly unique”
detective narrative. The detective is a strategic “reader” of clues and
Ray makes “reading” a phenomenological experience as Feluda is
an intensely rational reader of diaries, old maps, mystery books
like Heyerdahl’s Aku-Aku apart from being an informal proof­
reader of Jatayu’s manuscripts. The diary’s semiological plenitude
offers readers infinite play of epistemological possibilities. While
teleological ordering of whodunit narrative towards resolution
lies in disclosure and accretion of knowledge about perpetrator;
Feluda withholds scandalous details about aristocratic clients
out of a gentrified sense of probity. However, the perpetually
unresolved riddle and indeterminable locus of all secrets is the
inaccessible core of his sexuality, which remains privately intact. In
assisting Mahitosh Sinha-Roy in the writing of his family history
in Royal Bengal Rahasya (1974), as well as Pradyumna Malik in
 Feluda’s Serialised and Celluloid Selves: A Tale of Literariness... 113

writing Kandarpanarayan Acharya’s biography in Bosepukure

Khunkharapi (1985), Feluda serves as a pseudo-anthropologist.
Unlike Ashis Nandy, who sees a split between Ray’s cinematic
world and popular-fiction world, I would like to see the split in
generic terms as the series fluctuates between the close-knit whodunit
and boy adventure-thriller tale. The whodunit contains within itself
the textual possibilities of its own death; once flux of endless
outcomes is ordered, what Barthes calls “pleasure of the text”
is foreclosed. But in Feluda, desire is displaced and reorganised
around readers’ successive pleasure in re-reading it for the thrill of
adventure-thriller. Ray’s cinematic genius does leak into his popular
alter-ego; he uses architectural metaphors of enclosures such as the
mysterious “chessboard” like Golok Lodge in Golokdham Rahasya
(1980), Maganlal’s web-like “lair” in Joy Baba Felunath (1975) and
the “labyrinthine” Bhoolbhulaiya in Badshahi Angti (1966) to offer
a self-reflexive commentary on the genre’s closed structure. Like
Maganlal’s circuitous lair, whodunit is a closed narrative with a
determinate number of openings. Feluda physically enters into the
enclosure, a topsy-turvy world of perplexing unknowingness and
finally through heuristic exploration discovers secret “openings” to
emerge into the clear-sighted world of enlightenment.

References
1. Chakrabarti, G. (2013). The Bhadralok as truth-seeker: Towards a
social history of the Bengali detective, Cracow Indological Studies,
Vol. XIV, Part I, 255-271.
2. Chowdhary, S. (2015). Ageless hero, sexless man. South Asian
Review, Vol. 36, No. 1, 109-130.
3. Majumdar, L. (December 1995). Feluda at 30. Sandesh: Special
Edition (Bengali).
4. Nandy, A. (1995). The savage Freud and other essays on possible and
retrievable selves. Oxford University Press.
5. Ray, S. (2015). Trans. Majumdar, Gopa. The complete adventures of
Feluda I. Penguin.
6. Sen, N. (2015). Family, school and nation: The child and literary
constructions in 20th century Bengal. Routledge.
 6
The Popular ‘Dexter’: Its Heirs and Impact
on Indian Media
Neha Singh

The depiction of crime has enjoyed a high demand in the market

for at least two centuries, in the written as well as other forms.
Crime writing in the form of novels and short stories, and also
newspaper reportage, entertained readers in the 18th century and
continues to do so. As mentioned earlier, the contemporary
media market constantly strikes to provide abundant material
for consumers of crime portrayal with varied interests. Even in
this abundant market teeming with series on crime, Showtime’s
“Dexter” boasts of a high Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rating
of 8.6 (as on May 17, 2020) and has been made available on
various leading television and media provider platforms, owing to
an extraordinary demand even after seven years of the airing of its
last episode on September 22, 2013. This chapter aims to examine
“Dexter” with an Indian lens and perspective. Beginning with an
overview of crime writing in the British, American and Indian
contexts, this chapter will attempt to examine it as a popular
literary form that has portrayed violence in varying degrees and
ways over different spatial and temporal contexts. Further, a close
analysis of “Dexter” will be used to examine social codes that
affect and are affected by criminality, with specific instances from
the show. Through this study, the research will seek to ascertain
 The Popular ‘Dexter’: Its Heirs and Impact on Indian Media 115

possible reasons behind the popularity of the show and examine

it with reference to its representation of morality and violence.
Additionally, the chapter will conduct a brief overview of a few
crime shows on contemporary Indian platforms, in order to
identify the possible impact of “Dexter” on Indian media content.
The introduction of the sound film in the 1920s and the
popularisation of television in the 1950s and 60s elevated the
representation of crime to a level unforeseen at the time when print
culture had dominated the market. What had earlier been imagined
and mentally constructed from the pages of printed texts became
directly available to the eye. The visual appeal of television further
enhanced the demand for fresh and reworked writing around
crime. As more and more print material was adapted to create
films and televised series, increasingly experimental methods and
techniques were employed in order to bring greater authenticity to
the viewing experience. It is true that shows such as ‘Dexter’ tend to
leave ‘a’ lasting transnational impact on media cultures beyond its
geographical space as is evident from its popularity in India.

Violence in Crime Writing: A Brief Overview

While Martin Priestman (2003) has traced the origin of criminality
in Western Anglophone writing to the 18th century, Ian A. Bell
(2003) has described 18th century crime writing as “intrinsically
contentious”, in that it is willing to “confront and disquiet rather
than comfort” (p. 8). This fascination with criminality continued
over the 19th century, with Newgate novels and sensation novels,
both of which privileged the portrayal of thrill and adventure in
their depiction of crime. Lyn Pykett (2003) has highlighted that
the reason behind the popularity of the Newgate novels lay in the
way they “made a spectacle of ‘deviant’ or socially transgressive
behaviour” (p. 20). Initial instances of writings on crime can thus
be seen as texts that attempted to recognise and represent the
disorderly social and legal rubric that surrounded their creation,
rather than build sanitised, utopic textual universes. Additionally,
these texts revelled in the portrayal of violence, although this was
apparently directed towards a moralising or policing purpose.
116 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

The detection trope became the central concern of Anglophone

crime writing from the late 19th century onwards. Following in
the footsteps of Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868) and Mary
Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), Edgar Allan Poe,
Arthur Conan Doyle and G.K. Chesterton created respectively the
famous detective figures of C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes
and Father Brown. While the rational problem-solving approach of
these detective figures provided a semblance of order, the portrayal
of violence in these texts acknowledged the ubiquity of crime in
the fraught social context of the time. The high point of detection,
however, was reached in 20th century crime writing. The detective
novels of the “golden age” marked a watershed in the history of
crime writing; while the titles of these novels freely used the words
death, murder and blood (unlike before), the writing style was
extremely plain and the tone, tranquil and rational. The classic
clue-puzzle format of the twentieth century became a preferred
format for detective fiction, offering a veneer of relief over the
disturbed political and social fabric of the time. The “golden age”
fiction in England, similar to the 19th century detective stories,
hinged on the ubiquity of violence, while attempting to balance it
with the assurance of detection and penal action.
While the English “golden age” writers abstained from the direct
representation of crime and violence, their contemporary American
“hardboiled” detective fiction writers such as Raymond Chandler
and Dashiell Hammett certainly did not. The private eye fiction of
the early 20th century in America is named after an underpinning
of the “hardboiled” philosophy of life, replete with street crime
and violence. These tough populist heroes are typically represented
as the sole upholders of righteousness in an otherwise unethical
context, directing their detection towards the betterment of society.
Fictional detectives such as Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer even
pushed their process of detection to reflect “an undisguised pleasure
in inflicting pain” (Porter, 2003, p. 111). Thus, the representation
of violence and the idea of morality underwent a significant change
with “hardboiled” fiction, paving the way for a nuanced depiction
of categories in crime writing that were earlier taken for granted.
 The Popular ‘Dexter’: Its Heirs and Impact on Indian Media 117

The 20th century also saw the proliferation of various subgenres

of crime writing such as spy fiction, thriller and police procedural,
all of which proved consequential to the depiction of violence and
morality in later crime fiction. While subgenres like spy fiction “set
a keynote of adventure and glamorous action” (Seed, 2003, p. 126)
that helped readers indulge in fantasies of power, action and sex,
the thriller often provoked “an urgent desire for rough justice”
(Glover, 2003, p. 138), laying minimal emphasis on the element
of detection. Since the shock value in thrillers depended on it, the
degree of violence was elevated to extreme levels at times. Similarly,
as pointed out by Leroy L. Panek (2003), the police procedural in
America afforded more space for brutal violence, often without
motive.
The representation of violence became much more immediate
in the 20th century with the emergence of new media such as the
radio, film and television. Nickianne Moody (2003) has highlighted
the strong correspondence between the origin of the popular media
and portrayal of crime through the same. New media immediately
responded to the rising demand for crime narratives and the origin
of the sound film also marked the beginning of the crime narrative
on film. Although censorship laws regulated the degree of violence
on screen, both the British and the American markets displayed a
high demand for crime narratives. This increasing demand ensured
that more scripts began to be written exclusively for cinema as
well as television. Apart from adaptations of “golden age” and
“hardboiled” detective fiction, the 20th century witnessed the
proliferation of subgenres such as the gangster film, social problem
film, prison film, film noir, psycho-horror, slasher and various
others, situated on the boundaries between them. These new
subgenres broadened the horizons of traditional crime narratives
by experimenting with notions of morality, vantage points of crime
occurrence and its detection, narrative methods, and the degree of
violence portrayed on screen.
Contemporaneous to the 19th century “golden age” detective
fiction tradition in Britain, the Indian literary landscape
produced numerous popular detective figures in its latter half.
118 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Bengali fictional sleuths dominated the scene with personalities

like Byomkesh Bakshi and Feluda that still hold sway over the
popular imagination. While the fictional writings of Sharadindu
Bandyopadhyay and Satyajit Ray remained unparalleled, there
were other memorable and popular detective characters such as
P.K. Basu (created by Narayan Sanyal), Kiriti Roy (by Dr. Nihar
Ranjan Gupta), Parashor Barma (by Premendra Mitra), Kakababu
(by Sunil Gangopadhyay), and Shabor Dasgupta (by Shirshendu
Mukhopadhyay), that attracted considerable readership/viewership
in the late 19th to mid 20th centuries and ensured the continued
consumption of detective/crime drama. Alongside niche Bengali
detective fiction writers, the market for pulp fiction in the 20th
century supplemented the popularity of crime writing in India by
churning out thousands of new titles every year. Popular Hindi
novelists such as Surender Mohan Pathak, Om Prakash Sharma, Ved
Prakash Sharma and Gulshan Nanda helped supply a proliferating
market for crime fiction, detective fiction and psychological
thrillers with fresh titles every week. The Indian Anglophone
writing tradition has also had its share of crime and detective
fiction as well as thrillers from the late 19th century onwards.
Madhulika Liddle, Kalpana Swaminathan, Piyush Jha, Vikram
Chandra, Ankush Saikia, Ashok Banker, Kishwar Desai, Hussain
Zaidi and Swati Kaushal are among those who have experimented
with a foreign form as well as appropriated and contextualised it.
Indian crime writing has become a genre in its own right, having
assimilated and experimented with genres, subgenres and styles as
varied as historical and mythological writing to detective thrillers
and murder mysteries.
The abundant market for crime fiction served as a fertile
ground for film and television scripts in the 20th century, when
adaptations of existing crime novels and stories began to be rapidly
adapted for popular television shows. The rising demand for crime
and detective fiction also gave rise to the production of several TV
series such as “Karamchand”, “Tehkikaat”, “CID”, “Crime Patrol”,
and “Saavdhaan India” among others. Inspired by the dramatised
fusion of real crime and drama in these shows, news channels
 The Popular ‘Dexter’: Its Heirs and Impact on Indian Media 119

started airing shows such as “India’s Most Wanted” and “Sansani”,

which relied on heavy sensationalisation of ‘news items’ that were
recreated on air by anchors such as Suhaib Ilyasi and Shrivardhan
Trivedi. Thus, the Indian production of crime fiction evolved from
sanitised and neat Sherlockian detectives solving crimes with logic
and rationality to gritty portrayals of real crime, often exaggerated
in tenor to increase viewership as well as ratings.

“Dexter”: Form and Characterisation

Based on a novel series by Jeff Lindsay, “Dexter” is a crime series
that was originally aired on Showtime, an American television
network, and was first adapted for television in 2006. The first novel
by Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter (2004), inspired the first season
of the series, with a few differences in plot and characterisation.
Thereafter, the next seven seasons were developed independently
of Lindsay’s subsequent novels in the series and were aired between
2007 and 2013. The central character, Dexter Morgan, is a serial killer
who kills only serial killers that have escaped the judicial system.
Employed as a blood-spatter analyst in the forensics department of
the Miami Metro Police Department, Dexter has ample opportunity
to be at close proximity with everyday criminality. He experienced
a deeply scarring traumatic event in his childhood, at the age of
three, when his mother was brutally murdered and hacked to pieces
with a chainsaw. Harry Morgan, the police officer who rescued
him, brought Dexter up as a foster son in the company of his own
family. Recognising a psychopathic violent urge to kill in young
Dexter, Harry channelled the latter’s energies towards hunting till
the time he grew up and found it harder to control the desire. As
a young adolescent, Dexter is advised by his foster father to track
down criminals who escape the system due to lack of evidence.
As the viewer finds out in the last season, this advice was given
to Harry by Dr. Evelyn Vogel, a psychiatrist, who convinced the
former that there was a place for Dexter in the world, just as for
everyone else. Dr. Vogel helped Harry design a “code” for Dexter,
which would help him identify, investigate and murder criminals
without risking detection and arrest. Dexter works as a blood­
120 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

spatter analyst by day and helps solve crime in Miami, and hunts
down serial killers and murders them by night.
At the most basic level, this makes “Dexter” a psychological
thriller (or horror) series. The first-person narrative is given to the
viewer from Dexter’s own point of view; this diegetic mode delivers
the finer details of Dexter’s thought process to the viewers and
makes them understand him better. The psychological narrative
takes the secondary form of horror or thriller, depending on the
sensation that is invoked in the viewer. The excessive depiction of
stabbed, wounded and fragmented bodies gives the series a character
much like the slasher film, except that these killings by Dexter
are not random. Dexter is extremely methodical, and confirms
his victims’ guilt well before he kills them, quite ritualistically. As
Dexter is part of the police force, his daily schedule involves police
paperwork, procedure and technological investigation, which give
the series its police procedural appeal. Thus “Dexter” rides on the
borders between multiple subgenres of crime writing, attracting
viewers with varied interests.
One of the most significant reasons for the show’s success is
the development of Dexter Morgan as a multi-faceted character
through the eight seasons of the series. As a blood-spatter analyst,
Dexter Morgan is brilliant at his job. When summoned at a crime
scene, he is easily able to reconstruct the angle of attack, duration
of struggle, intensity of force and direction of blood-spatter, all in a
matter of a few seconds. He is well acquainted with the human body
in its detail and is frequently able to provide valuable insights that
his colleagues cannot. His reports are much sought after, and they
often help solve cases that would otherwise be lost in the debris of
files. His sister, Debra Morgan, sets great store by his “hunches” as
they are almost always proven to be accurate. As a detective, Dexter
Morgan’s skill is beyond contestation.
On the other hand, Dexter plays the role of a relentless serial
killer, who never misses his target. He has an extraordinary sixth
sense in recognising criminals, which he backs up with evidence
after “breaking and entering” the target’s residence and pursuing
them, then sets up a “kill room”, and finally murders them. His
 The Popular ‘Dexter’: Its Heirs and Impact on Indian Media 121

“kill room” is covered in removable plastic sheets, and has a killing

table, a set of sharp knives and several big garbage disposal bags, all
of which ensure that Dexter is never caught. He cuts his victims’
bodies into pieces, packs them up in garbage bags, and dumps them
on the ocean bed from his boat at night. As a criminal, Dexter is
meticulous, thorough and impossible to catch. In the words of
Jared A. Defife (2010), he is a “lethal predator”. Isabel Santaularia
(2010) has similarly pointed out that “[e]ven though he only kills
criminals, he does so moved by his craving and blood-lust” (p. 60)
and therefore, is a villain.
In the pilot episode, Dexter acknowledges his sociopathic
tendencies by telling the viewers that he fakes human emotions
and rehearses them enough to be perceived as genuine. He issues
several reminders to viewers that he does not have real feelings
and the diegetic mode ensures that this is reiterated numerous
times. However, Dexter’s development through the series might
suggest otherwise. Lisa Firestone (2010) has opined that Dexter’s
psychopathic label is a misdiagnosis by Harry/Dr. Vogel and his life
could have been very different, had he been shown a different path.
Firestone has recognised the “anti-self” in Dexter that was formed
in response to his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms
and was exacerbated by his foster father Harry’s code, and that
Harry should have directed Dexter towards therapy instead of
teaching him a “code” that glorified serial killing. Since labels such
as sociopath and psychopath are based on an absence of feelings
of empathy within an individual, Firestone’s analysis seems quite
credible—Dexter develops some deep human connections over the
course of the series.
Due to his vision of ridding society of criminals that get
away, Dexter has also been viewed as a superhero figure. Green
et al. (2011) have opined that Dexter’s inability to feel makes him
transcend human emotions such as personal revenge and render
dispassionate justice. Accounting for this superhero comparison,
they have highlighted his orphaned past, loneliness and outsider
status and also his sixth sense about criminals. J.M. Tyree (2011)
has pointed to the superhero comparison within the series; when
122 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Dexter’s victims’ bodies are discovered on the ocean bed, a pattern

is finally traced and it begins to emerge that all bodies belonged
to serial killers. The public “applauds him, elevating Dexter to the
status of a folk-tale avenger or comic-book anti-hero” (p. 85).
As Dexter pursues criminals but is also one in his own right,
he could be seen to override his ‘outsider’ status and might rather
be considered as an in-between character, a villain-hero. Above all
these roles, is the mask: Dexter’s easy-going, calm, sunny smile and
his smooth veneer of the sensitive partner, caring father, protective
brother and happy doughnut-bringing colleague. He recognises the
importance of “blending in”, a strategy taught to him by Harry
in his childhood. Whether insider or outsider, hero or villain,
sociopath, psychopath, or otherwise, Dexter is impossible to
place into any neat categorisation. His personality is projected as
a complex amalgamation of multiple roles—police official, serial
killer and presumed psychopath—that he takes on, as all these roles
seem to justify his manipulative streak and override expectations of
humane codes such as social morality.

Morality and Representation of Violence in “Dexter”

As a serial-killer vigilante protagonist, the notion of morality as
represented through the figure of Dexter is extremely nuanced. As
earlier pointed out, Dexter meticulously follows “Harry’s code” in
order never to get caught, and also falsifies or misdirects evidence
to point away from himself whenever he is close to getting caught.
These grey shades to his dark personality appear in greater degree
with every passing season. If Debra Morgan symbolises the moral
compass of the show, her downward spiral and final death are
symbolic of a complete breakdown of moral order. However,
Dexter’s condition and his choice of victims make it extremely
difficult to label the series completely devoid of a moral parameter.
While Dexter’s life has been shaped by Dr. Vogel’s notion and
Harry’s guidance, the final episode (8.12) and Dexter’s chosen state
of isolation end the series on an ambiguous note. The question
that emerges after the series ends, is one that Dr. Vogel had chosen
to answer perhaps too prematurely: is there, after all, a place for
 The Popular ‘Dexter’: Its Heirs and Impact on Indian Media 123

Dexter in society? Dexter’s survival in the end, along with his

choice to isolate himself, are both defiant steps, taking “Dexter”
away from providing easy answers.
Similar to series and films in the slasher and psychological
thriller/horror subgenres, “Dexter’s” representation of blood and
violence is rather explicit. From the pilot episode onwards, the
viewer is made accustomed to the sight of blood being spilt. Also
owing to the police procedural aspect of the series, human bodies
are represented both, during as well as after the act of killing. Since
Dexter works as a blood-spatter analyst, the viewer is taken to all
the crime scenes and has to work out spatter patterns with him.
Since he is also a serial killer, the viewer also witnesses the acts of
stabbing and dismembering. Although the exact site of blood spill
is often removed from the direct focus of the camera, the spatter on
Dexter’s face must be witnessed by the viewer. The spectacular value
of blood spilling and spattering on the screen is quite deliberate.
The question, however, is whether this exuberant display of blood
is subsumed within this spectacular value.
The answer is multifold—apart from the spectacle, the display
of blood might be deliberately placed in order to fulfil some other
functions within the series. First, if this display were only intended
for shock value, this would easily have faded after the first few
episodes and certainly would not merit ninety-six episodes. It
projects the trauma of Dexter’s childhood that is recreated in the
act of each killing that he commits. This is, perhaps, one way to
depict the severity of his childhood trauma, as also its profound
impact on the rest of his life.
Finally, the ritualistic nature of Dexter’s killings gives the
violence another meaning. At one level, the dismembering could
be a practical choice in order to dispose of the bodies conveniently.
Also, as earlier mentioned, it could be a symbolic act through which
Dexter tries to recreate the exact site/sight of his mother’s brutal
murder, towards a cathartic effect. Lastly, this ritualistic character
elevates the stabbing and dismembering from a functional to a
performative level, making the show self-consciously aware of its
(ab)use of violence and blood.
124 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Dexter’s Possible Heirs: Representation(s) of Serial Killers

on Indian Media Platforms
Although “Dexter” is one of many crime shows portraying a serial
killer as its protagonist, its immense international popularity has
had a powerful echo in the Indian context as well, making it a
worthy subject for analysis. Although India does not yet boast
of its own equivalent to the show, there are currently numerous
instances of crime shows centred on serial killers on Indian
streaming platforms. This is not to claim that India has not had
its own share of serial killers, or a tradition of films that depict
them in real or fictitious terms, but to suggest that Indian media
content focusing on serial killers has increased rapidly in the
last few years, and that this growth could be attributed to shows
such as “Dexter”. Keeping in mind the scope of the paper, the
analysis here will be limited to a few examples of Hindi films and
shows that have exhibited such portrayals. The purpose is merely
to illustrate the growing consumption of what could be labelled
“Dexter’s” possible heirs.
Following the tradition of media content inspired by true
crime, the first instance of a Hindi film based on the life of a
serial killer was Bharathi Raja’s Red Rose (1980), which was a remake
of the Tamil film Sigappu Rojakkal (1978). Based on India’s most
notorious serial killer who had terrorised the 1960s Bombay, Raman
Raghav, the film ended in legal as well as moral retribution, as the
serial killer is imprisoned and loses his memory and sanity. In
his biography of Rajesh Khanna, Gautam Chintamani (2014) has
attributed the film’s commercial failure to the Indian audience’s
inability to accept a deranged character as their hero. Chintamani’s
analysis explains, in part, the dearth of serial killers on the
Indian cinema screen, especially as protagonists. However, Sriram
Raghavan’s Raman Raghav, A City, A Killer (1991), a docufictional
film that was never distributed commercially, opened with the real-
life killer’s confession, emphasising the psychological profile of the
culprit that had a huge role to play in his criminal actions. This
was perhaps the earliest instance of the serial killer’s perspective
being represented in an Indian film, and the fact that this film
 The Popular ‘Dexter’: Its Heirs and Impact on Indian Media 125

never reached commercial mainstream platforms highlights the

unpopularity of such a representation in the Indian context of the
time.
From the 1990s to now, the Indian film industry has undergone
a significant shift in terms of representing the psychological aspect
of serial killers’ crimes. While films such as Tanuja Chandra’s
Dushman (1998), Mohit Suri’s Murder 2 (2011) and Ek Villain (2014),
and Shirish Kunder’s Mrs. Serial Killer (2020) have all portrayed
intense sexual violence against women by serial killers, they provide
rather simplified views of the psychological motives behind these
crimes, and the focus is on the perspective of the victim/investigator
rather than the criminal. Even though Ram Gopal Verma’s Kaun
(1999) inverted the gender profile in serial killer films by depicting
a female serial killer rather than the obvious male, thus shifting
the focus away from gendered violence as the dominant focus, it
provided no psychological exploration of the criminal mind, and
the emphasis remained the whodunit-inspired elements of thrill
and suspense. Further, films such as Sangharsh (Tanuja Chandra,
1999) and Samay (Robby Grewal, 2003) pushed the boundaries of
psychological analysis in mainstream cinema, but stayed faithful to
the good hero/bad criminal divide.
Similar to Red Rose, other real-life Indian serial killers have
provided inspiration for films such as Manish Gupta’s The Stoneman
Murders (2009), a fictionalised account based on the crimes of
“Stoneman”, the unidentified serial killer of the 1980s Bombay
and also perhaps, Calcutta. The film linked the killings to tribal
ritualistic sacrifices and stayed safely away from any psychological
explorations of the motive/criminal. However, the homage
to the first film by the same name, Anurag Kashyap’s Raman
Raghav 2.0 (2016) attempted to push boundaries of good/evil with
its juxtaposition of the psychopath killer Ramanna and the corrupt
and violent cop, Raghav. Recently, Suman Mukhopadhyay’s
Posham Pa (2019) explored questions of marginalities such as class,
and also nuanced debates such as nature/nurture theories of crime,
in its portrayal of India’s first female serial killers, Anjana, Seema
Gavit and Renuka Shinde. The film also raised other significant
126 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

questions such as the simplified definition of a psychopath, and

the validity of capital punishment.
The shift from the whodunit to the whydunit in Indian cinema
is heavily surpassed by the web series on streaming platforms in
India. Over the last two years, crime shows on OTT media platforms
have explored nuances of criminality at an unprecedented pace. A
brief examination of some of these shows will suffice to elucidate
the transformation in the representation of criminals on Indian
media platforms, serial killers in particular. In the tradition of true
crime-inspired content, Abhay (2019) directed by Ken Ghosh and
Kookie Gulati has used true crime episodes such as the Nithari
case as inspiration for crime stories. Considered an heir of shows
such as CID and Crime Patrol, Abhay is a police procedural that
explores the psychological journeys of not merely criminals but
also the investigators. Portraying the titular protagonist as a cop
who pushes judicial and ethical boundaries to catch criminals, the
show blurs lines between simplistic binaries such as good and evil.
The show Pataal Lok (2020), directed by Avinash Arun and Prosit
Roy, explores the socio-economic conditions of deprivation and
exploitation that shape criminal profiles. The lead criminal/serial
killer in the show, Vishal “Hathoda” Tyagi, has been depicted as a
political hitman who commits brutal murders but seems unaffected
by the violence that he inflicts. Unlike “Dexter”, the show keeps
away from the impact of bloodshed on the criminal mind. Since
the psychological narratives of the ‘criminals’ in the show are
subsumed within personality profiling, the show leaves room for
deeper psychological exploration of criminality.
While the first season of Mayank Sharma’s Breathe (2018)
charts the transformation of an ordinary but desperate father into
a serial killer, wherein the motivation for crime comes across as
strictly need-based, the second season (2020) explores the nuances
of a mind that accommodates both sides of the traditional binary,
transforming the victim into the culprit. Revealing the dissociative
personality of a criminal, the two sides of whose personality are in
a constant state of conflict, the show attempts further exploration
of the psychological state of a criminal mind. While it attempts
 The Popular ‘Dexter’: Its Heirs and Impact on Indian Media 127

an apparently ‘right’ solution, the final moral stand of the show

remains ambiguous, defying simplistic expectations of crime and
punishment.
Tathagata Mukherjee’s Water Bottle (2019) depicts another cold-
blooded serial killer (Jyotileshwar) whose murders of children are
motivated by deep-seated childhood experiences of fear, but whose
accomplice kills purely out of a deep desire to inflict violence. Further,
the portrayal is complicated by the presence of a second accomplice,
who is more interested in watching murders being committed, citing
Edgar Allan Poe’s desire for the same as his primary motivation.
While the bloodshed and gore remain standard, the show introduces
the perpetual ‘thirst’ of the killer as his primary motivation, thereby
venturing into a Dexter-like acceptance of the urge to kill. Although
the show approaches the crimes from the vantage point of the
investigative machinery, there is adequate screen time allotted to
the killer which helps the audience understand, at least partly, his
motivation for the crime and its impact on him. The show that
challenges traditional binaries in the furthest degree is Oni Sen’s
Asur (2020), which has used the deva/asur binary to examine the
controversial intellectual/criminal dichotomy. Juxtaposing the
exploration of Hindu myth with the examination of a criminal mind,
the show attempts to study the origin and nature of what is generally
considered ‘evil’. This exploration is extended to understand the
origin of a psychopath; the show touches upon the nature/nurture
debate akin to Dexter, and examines what goes into his/her making.
Although the vantage point remains that of the investigators, the
ethics are highly complex—it is the investigator’s unethical decision
that is largely responsible for the criminal intent of a genius mind.
Upholding that the “dark side” exists within each individual, the
protagonist (serial killer) exposes the asur that may easily take over the
minds of all people alike, including the law upholders in the show.
As is evident from this brief examination of these shows, Indian
media content today abounds in representations of serial killers that
clearly mark a shift from the whodunit to whydunit format, where
greater emphasis is laid on the psychological motivations as well as
implications of criminality.
128 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Conclusion
As a television series, “Dexter” defies any neat categorisation and
is located at the intersection of several subgeneric categories, and
appeals to viewers with varied interests for that reason. Through
its depiction of violence as well as its statement on a nuanced
vision of morality, the show defies any easy classification, while
raising several pertinent questions about violence, morality and
most significantly, the possibility of a presumed psychopath serial
killer’s position and survival in society.
These complex examinations are echoed in several Indian
crime shows across various media streaming platforms today. As
the focus of crime drama shifts from the whodunit thriller/mystery
to the whydunit format, representations of criminality are raising
questions rather than providing simple answers. Questioning
binaries such as good/evil, hero/villain, detective/criminal
and right/wrong, crime shows in India today are representing
‘criminals’ in complex shades, perhaps also making a case for a
better understanding of criminality, whether on or off screen.

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 III
(Discoursing) Politics of the Popular
 7
Graphic Novels and Delhi: Contested
Spaces in the Popular
Sangeeta Mittal

The Graphic Novel is a genre that has a rich history of evolution as

well as an equally resonant body of theory and praxis with growing
academic interest in this form of cultural production. Though
the Graphic Novel is traced as far back as to cave paintings and
hieroglyphics, yet its origin can be more directly traced to certain
styles of expression developing in England of the 18th century.
William Hogarth, James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson sketched
sequential panels to tell a story. There are writers like Laurence Sterne
and William Blake whose works have an integral illustrative element.
Rodolphe Topffer, in his Histoire de Monsieur Jabot and Other Stories,
uses sketches to fit panels of different sizes, producing an effect
like the comic book. The trend is carried forward by magazines like
Le Charivari in France, Punch in England and the popular series
Max and Moritz in Germany. By this time, the prototypical shape
of the comic has emerged with series of pictures/ sketches, word
balloons, varying panel sizes, and use of caricature. The comic
strip or book as we know it continues to thrive in America. The
first period extends from 1890 to 1930 when newspaper magnates
like Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst in New York
patronise the form to increase circulation among children and
non-native speakers of English, the second period—1930 to 1950—is
134 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

the superhero period as the world war and the Great Depression
have America in search of larger than life secular gods while from
the 1950s onwards interest revives in crime, romance, sci-fi and
comics. The comic strip or book gets elevated from its associations
with funny, juvenile literature by many intellectualised retelling
and reimagining using fine art and themes of nostalgia, identity,
conflict and meta-history of the genre itself. Designers, connoisseur
(Chip Kidd), editors and publishers (Dan Frank of Pantheon, New
York) all play a part in the coming of age story of the Graphic
Novel. There are numerous maestros who produce extremely
innovative advancements, yet the magical combination of pictures
and dialogues in a longish non-serialised form happens not before
the 1970s. Increasing interest of academia, reducing gap between
highbrow and lowbrow literature, and increasing interdependence
of the literary and the virtual world, the Graphic Novel’s enhanced
status on bookshelves as well as classrooms in this decade is a
product of improved imagistic-discursive design operating through
transnational visual-verbal rhetoric.
Today the oeuvre of the Graphic Novel is burgeoning
with many fictional and non-fictional gems. Their intriguing
intersectionality with comics, fanfiction, fantasy, sci-fi, folklore,
life-writing, journalism, historical fiction, pedagogical tools, films
and novels has secured their ineluctable presence in the literary
universe. The term ‘Graphic Novel’ was coined by Richard Kyle in
1964. The first important Graphic Novel is generally acknowledged
to be Will Eisner’s A Contract with God and Other Tenements (1978).
Art Spiegelman and Alan Moore contribute further to the growing
acceptability of the Graphic Novel. As the son of holocaust survivors,
Spiegelman writes of his life in now iconic Maus. Moore’s Watchmen
is a sci-fi story of a futile attempt to end war. Over a period, the
genre has gathered eccentric superheroes, adaptations of classics,
hard-hitting parodies and satires, biographies, illustrations of non­
fiction work and adventurous travel narratives. Straddling such vast
variety and long history, the attempt to define the Graphic Novel
and identify its common and core features can be a daunting task.
Carter (2007) defines a graphic novel as a “book-length sequential
 Graphic Novels and Delhi: Contested Spaces in the Popular 135

art narrative featuring an anthology-style collection of the comic

art, a collection of reprinted comic book issues comprising a single
story line (or arc), or an original, stand-alone graphic narrative”
(p. 1). The first obvious implication is that “Graphic Novels are the
long-form of a mode of communication called comics” (Duncan &
Smith, 2017, p. 9). Further, in a process resembling an assembly line,
Graphic Novels combine writing, artwork, page-setting, colouring,
etc. Duncan & Smith identify “four key elements” to the graphic
novel (p. 10). These include the panel, the sequence, the page and
the narrative. The panel is the basic unit here comprising a spatial
or visual enclosure that portrays a moment or scene. A panel as such
demarcates frames, creates narrative blocks, showcases kinesics and
communications and builds mise-en-scene as required. When panels
are placed in correlation to each other, then a sequence is born. It is
of utmost importance for the storyteller to select what and how he
or she wants to show and what is to be left to the readers’ inference.
The technique and tempo of the narration depends on the number,
size, placement, direction, continuity of the panels and orientation
of action and the readers’ relative position to them. The ‘gutter’ or
the space between the two panels (or key moments) in a sequence
is the reader participative space as in this transition (or skipped
moment) the reader effects the closure and absorption of the
previous panel and entry into the next panel. The page is a physical
delimitation of the printed space, but it is also the parameter along
which the sequences are organised. Panels may fall into grids on a
page, a page may comprise a single panel (splash panel), or there may
be a ‘spread’ with panels arranged on two side by side pages. The
narrative as we know it must have the five classical elements in the
form of the central character, a trigger, complexity and challenge,
climax and finally the reversal and downfall. All this unfolds along
a thematic trajectory. A narrative also juxtaposes the familiar against
the unsettling. Narratives use evocative language to convey their
meanings and messages.
From the above, it becomes evident that there are some
distinct affordances that the Graphic Novel offers. The Graphic
Novel provides a hybrid experience of viewing and reading at the
136 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

same time. Surrounded by multimedia in the postmodern age,

this hybrid reading is a norm rather than the exception for the
reader, eliminating the need for elaborate verbal descriptions and
thus condensing and intensifying the reading experience. Secondly,
the presence of words uplifts this medium over the limitations of
purely visual media while the presence of images makes possible
the amalgamation of the ineffable. Thirdly, the visuals and words
in moving media like television or films are relatively ephemeral as
compared to the permanent images of the Graphic Novel readily
accessible and negotiable at the flip of a page. This materiality makes
the narrative more visceral and affective for the reader. Formalist
studies have valorised “the genre’s visual-verbal multi-valences”
as an offshoot of the phenomenon that cultures worldwide
have undertaken “the broad move from the now centuries-long
dominance of writing to the new dominance of the image” (Kress,
2003, p. 1). With the rising critical attention, several contestations
are also now part of the genre. The most asked question is—how
literary is the Graphic Novel? Jan Baetens and Hugo Frey (2015)
emphasise that not just in England, but in “America, France and
Belgium too, there has been a significant warp and weave occurring
between literary fiction and the Graphic Novel, and vice-versa”
(p. 191). The over-arching term ‘Graphic Novel’ is itself under
review. Catherine Labio (2011) argues that these terms privilege
the literary character of the form over its visual component and
this usage “sanitises comics”. Thus the Graphic Novel constitutes
a unique and contemporary expressive space, the inherent
contestations of the children-adults, popular-literary, word-picture,
dominant-emergent, authoritative-subversive and generic-parodic/
deviant, all of which make it a natural ideological ally of other
similarly and vigorously contested spaces.
The city is one such space and floodgates of new structural and
critical possibilities open when this space articulates the city space.
Cities are synonymous with civilisation. The word ‘city’ has its
etymological roots in Latin civis (citizen) and civitas (citizenship).
Mumford (1986) observes, “The city is the characteristic of most
civilisations and is often considered their fullest expression. Its
 Graphic Novels and Delhi: Contested Spaces in the Popular 137

origins can be traced back beyond the ‘urban revolutions’ which

took place … in Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC to the
archaeological remains of Jericho and Catal Hoyuc (Anatolia).
After all these centuries, the quality of urban life is still man’s
central concern” (p. 104). He sees the city as the unique human
phenomenon that reflects coherence and cohesion through its many
institutions. The city is symbolic of order that enshrines security,
diversity, vitality and possibility. It is the creator, consumer and
disseminator of culture. The glorified idea of the city suffered a
setback with the Industrial Revolution which catapulted the city to
the status of the dominant form of human habitation on the one
hand, but also made it amorphous, dangerous and delinked from
monoculture of any kind. Political machinery, economic activity,
suburbanisation, peri-urbanisation, migration, and tourism have
all contributed to the making of the metropolis—the intimidating
environments of which are the biggest denominators of human
struggle and aspiration. If the idea of order is integral to the city,
the idea of unrest has also been synchronic with the development
of the city. The postmodern city is no longer ‘knowable’ as a fixed
subject, but ‘writable’ as a summation of conflicting subjectivities
(Harding, 2003, p. 9). Cities though thought eminently imageable
(Lynch, 1960) are fraught with inequities and erasures that seethe
under their glossy photogenic composure. The graphic narratives
located within discourse of the popular quintessentially create a
specialised tool kit for viewing the city of Delhi from an alternative
intermediality that visiblises the silences, omissions, gaps and
ruptures in the synoptic panoply of the city. The Graphic Novel
with its legacy of negotiating trauma, nostalgia, marginalisation,
memory, and identity makes possible the representation of the
relationship of the city-zen with the lived space of the city in its
characteristic de-centred and irreverential manner. Whether it
is a city grappling with oppression and exploitation or a site of
postmodern trials and tribulations, Graphic Novels make and
represent the counter-city of non-touristy, non-privileged and
non-conformist spaces. Urban historian Carl Schorske (1963) has
identified three tropes of thinking of the city since the 18th century:
The Enlightenment city of virtue, the anti-rational Victorian city
138 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

of vice and Spengler’s terminal modern city beyond virtue and

vice (p. 109). In “city writing”, the focus falls primarily on the
urban atmosphere as the process iterates the city into being and
the city-zen into being “there”. For instance, Lindsay Bremner
(2010), bases her writing on the city of Johannesberg on the belief
that a city becomes a city just the way a book becomes a book.
What readership is to a book, city-dwelling is to a city. The real city
is a compendium of routines, gestures, desires, textures, sounds,
shadows, light, glamour, noise and money. This is the concept of
the city asserted by Benjamin’s flâneur, Kracauer’s mass ornament,
Debord’s dérive, de Certeau’s walker, Rendell’s rambler, Mbembe
and Nuttall’s migrant labourer, and Le Marcis’ AIDS sufferer—a
city accessible only through lived practices of walking, loitering,
playing, commuting, seeing, hearing, knowing, talking, etc. Blanche
H. Gelfant (1954) divides the representation of the modern city
into three main types: the “portrait” in which the city is written
as the backdrop to the bildungsroman of the central character;
the “ecological” which brings out a particular trait or distinctive
feature of the city; and the “synoptic” where the primary purpose
seems to be to document the city. The expressive forms of city
writing prove useful and powerful in redefining and realigning the
sense of self in the context of the ‘other’.
The complexity of both the medium and the subject gets
further aggravated when the Graphic Novel takes on the city of
Delhi. Delhi presents itself with layers of history, displacements,
relocations, holocaust, and trauma built into its landscape on the
one hand, and democracy, neoliberalism, globality, culture and
cosmopolitanism on the other. Delhi is a city that not only compels
acknowledgement as a world city or megacity in its postmodern
avatar, but also necessitates engagement with contentious labels like
‘third world city’, ‘postcolonial city’ or ‘imperial city’. The choice to
represent postmodern Delhi as a Graphic Novel is a loaded one and
the paper undertakes to study how the spatial form of the Graphic
Novel responds to the urban space of the city of Delhi to emerge
as a zelig flaneur of technological societies. Sarnath Banerjee’s
Corridor and Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s Delhi Calm guide us through
 Graphic Novels and Delhi: Contested Spaces in the Popular 139

the urban squalor of postmodern Delhi with ‘graphic’ eloquence

and vividness affording rare glimpses into the psychogeography
of their non-heroes dealing with issues like migration, livelihoods,
crime, quacks, and human rights. The city of Delhi is an inevitable
presence in both the Graphic Novels as the political turmoil of
emergency and the existential angst of urbanity are played out in
its streets and conclaves. Both books are grounded in anguish and
upheaval. What Vishwajyoti Ghosh states about his Anthology This
Side That Side: Restorying Partition (2013) with respect to Partition
applies to Delhi Calm (2010) with respect to Emergency. Both
attempt to “do away with myths”; both have a “whole baggage
of history” attached to them; both see momentous events as not
just singular events but a collection of many mini versions “that
we carry in our heads” and “both need reprocessing by the future
generations” to deal with the translations, backlogs and opacities
that accrue to these events. Corridor is not so much about political
oppression as it is about “the alienation and fragmented reality of
urban life”. Delhi Calm concludes at
Soon, state-of-the-art flyovers and colour television followed.
Then came the small red Japanaese cars … Since, then, New
Delhi has grown peacefully ever after. The Indian capital is now
known for its hospitality and polite behaviour. Never has an
Emergency been proclaimed again (Ghosh, 2010, p. 245).
Corridor has its characters live out their lives in “peaceful”
postmodern Delhi with their own private and inner disquietudes.
Delhi Calm is often described as a “political novel” documenting
the suspended democracy from June 26, 1975 to January 18, 1977
during the state of emergency declared in India. Ghosh’s project is
not to write urbanity and thus the ‘imageability’ of Delhi in this
novel is not synoptic but ecological. It brings out Delhi as the power
centre of the nation—the powerpolis (p. 7). The study of symbols
and rituals is vital for delineating the perceived imageability of
cities (Lynch, 1960). The Graphic Novel puts together the legible
identity of the city through imaging the interiority and exteriority
of its inmates. Graphic narratives unfold symbols and rituals
which are integral parts of the city. Rituals refer to the standardised
140 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

deeds within the construction of meaning while symbols relate to

something else and thus have extrinsic value. Urban symbolism is
inscribed in the layout, architecture, statues, street and place names
of the city but there are equally potent non-tactile mast bearers of
the iconic, behavioural and discursive types. As Nas explains, “the
same urban symbols that enhance the social binding of a specific
group on the one hand can also lead to the social exclusion or the
disintegration of certain communities on the other hand” (Nas,
2011, p. 284). In cities, where most of the population develops a
negative outlook or response to dominating symbols, become what
are called “wounded cities” and those traumatic symbols then need
to be imaginatively or physically reconfigured. Delhi Calm inscribes
the wounded city during Emergency to forge a robust and dialogic
engagement with perils of democracy transcending the hegemonic
taboo and amnesia.
The visuals in Delhi Calm are in consonance with the novel’s
attempt to not to document the event of emergency in historical or
political terms but in terms of its effect on the political subjectivities
of Delhi residents who are a microcosm of the whole nation. Delhi
Calm has Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi and Jayaprakash Narayan
(we have a visual of Raj Narain as well) on the one hand, and the
Naya Savera band, its three members—Vivek Kumar (Masterji), V.P.
(Vibhuti Prasad) and Parvez Alam with their associates like HK on
the other. The narrative takes us through the biographical sketches
of the former showing us their evolution and motivation, but these
passages are distinguished less with the use of backdrop and more
with the use of metaphor and caricature. The formation, challenges,
travels and travails of the Naya Savera band; their re-union in Delhi
where they arrive for several different reasons and their activities
in Delhi upon declaration of Emergency is where the energy of
the visuals is vivid and intense as the zeitgeist of Emergency is
traced through the ebb and flow of revolutionary yearnings in the
youth of those times. Delhi Calm has only a few visuals in places
traditionally associated with affluence and influence; it has quite a
few on the other hand in the habitats and ghettos of the common
person. The many images of the city align it with the daily routine
 Graphic Novels and Delhi: Contested Spaces in the Popular 141

of ordinary human lives: a rising sun over a haphazard skyline

rising to the clockwork of Vividh Bharati radio station, travels
in DTC buses to work or by the ubiquitous auto-rickshaws and
rickshaws with street food, local tea-stalls and cheap liquor joints
for its evening pleasures. Carrying the Graphic Novel’s thematic
burden of proposing a counter-history through “restoring to the
surface of the text the repressed and buried reality” of canonical
history (Jameson, 1981, p. 20), the mise-en-scene picks up the lived
ambience of commoners like the serpentine roads, barbed fences,
crowds, queues, shabby housing, ill-lit streets, boards on shops
announcing livelihoods, overhanging wires, post box, two-wheeler
scooter, and transistor-radio. Even the Red Fort bearing the Indian
national flag stands relegated to the back of the frame (p. 162) with
ordinary everyday life in the foreground—a car, a scooter, men with
jholas, a jaljeera seller and the omnipresent electrical wires. The
pages of biographical sketches are black and white while the ‘janta’
pages are dusty and earthy with a non-binary colour coding: “sepia
is a “metaphor for memory” versus a Technicolor present. The red-
brown also evokes dried blood, emphasised by the frequent use of
ink splatters, especially in passages of violence. It is a shadowy city,
in any case” (Ghosh quoted by Ryan Holmberg, 2013, para 4). In a
narrative that seeks to replace ‘fabricated truths’ (p. 202) and ‘single
version’ of truth (p. 201) with “another version of truth lurking
somewhere”, the aesthetics of ‘alternative’ city spaces are only to
be expected and the Graphic Novel performs that task with its
traditional proclivity and proficiency.
City as well as democracy are philosophical frameworks based
on the expectation of progress, order and inter-dependence. The
discourse of power, however, introduces hierarchy, control, and
divides in the frameworks which are quintessentially built on equity
and liberty. The dramatic and significant moment of Emergency
highlights the power-based apparatus of state-building. In social
science theory, state-building means the “possession of capital,
weaponry, and organisational capacity:
The sociological theory of states directs us to examine the degree
and means by which state rulers (principals) can get their staffs,
142 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

various elites and local powers-that-be (agents) to “buy in” to

the state project, and thus do their bidding. Lawyers, guns
and money are useful ways to secure agents, as are, sometimes,
certain forms of intense identification (Reed, n.d, para 4).
Nascent states, however, depend on one more dimension of
power consolidation, and that is, public performance. Quoting
Reed again:
The model for the performative dimension of state-formation
is relatively straightforward; the devil is in the details of
interpretation. It is a model with three parts: Emergency, where
problems emerge that urgently demand (or appear to), the
demonstration of the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence
over a given territory by a would-be state; Acts of state, where in
response to the emergency, acts are taken “in the name of the
state” to kill, injure, coerce, threaten, or negotiate with named
adversaries, and solutions to emergency problems are sought
and acted out in public; and public interpretation, where via the
media, these acts of state are made widely available for variable
interpretation by elites and the populace. These interpretations
help secure the principal-agent relationships that make up the
state (Reed, n.d, para 7).
This political theatre plays out in the streets of the city. Delhi
Calm intertwines the threads of power, city, and resistance. The
performance of propaganda or soft sell is equally visible and
crucial in the city space as is the performance of the brute force.
Propaganda is constituted by state institutions like All India
Radio, Hoardings on DTC buses, slogans printed on bus tickets
and blaring on loudspeakers, folded hands humility of political
leaders on banners, huge TV screens installed in city-centres,
and newspaper reports like “mood of confidence in country”
(p. 132). Delhi Calm is itself a cliché manufactured to brainwash
the country into a state of stupefied silence. The technique and
stages of mounting hegemonic propaganda is very effectively
visiblised in the words of a DAVP (the government’s publicity
wing) employee who splatters the city with posters that “Instil
fear”, “Rationalise,” “Add mystique”, “Find a scapegoat”, “Bring
 Graphic Novels and Delhi: Contested Spaces in the Popular 143

in the people’s voice” and are “populist”, and “persuasive” (p. 177).
Nationalist sculpture in city spaces witnesses its transformation
from freedom fighters to “propaganda puppet(s) cast in bronze”
(p. 12). The biggest performance that the city witnesses is of
course the electoral performance—rightly called ‘the Great Indian
Performance’—which is repeated every five years. In the ‘election
drama’, optics are essence; as the absurdly high rostrums, starched
cottons, smiles, waves, rallies, trucks, buses, festoons, microphones
create the “greatest template of support (or sycophancy) … forever
embellishing this nation’s democracy” (p. 114). As awe-inspiring
as the optics are also the narratives and catchphrases. “New India”
and “moon is our mother, our motherland is moon” are skilfully
crafted slogans, phrases and stories by the very best in the PR and
advertising industry to be drilled into the mass psyche. Ramlila
ground is an example of those specially designated coliseums in
the city where power is performed ritually and theatrically. We
have the performance of governance that has the city as a captive
audience. The declaration of Emergency is worded in the discourse
of “progressive measures” (p. 3), “security in peril” (p. 4), “healthy
nation”, and “proactive measures to control the population” (p. 19).
The governance architecture is visible in the form of Red Fort,
Parliament and North and South Blocks, the iconic ambassador
car, and the proverbial chair. The grand old party is termed the
‘syndicate’, ‘the dynasty’ and ‘the caucus’. All three are a product
of the conviction and compulsion of the moon to govern shrewdly
and firmly: “The nation needed a new language, a new rhetoric, that
of the streets” (p. 48). Accordingly, the streets fill with the ‘Smiling
Saviours’—the Samaritans of the caucus—to roll out people-centric
measures, but in effect, they only bring state-sponsored scrutiny and
domination. The “small club” that runs the nation operates from
the hallowed precincts of the LBZ zone and its fecund presence
makes Delhi forever a façade, an arrival lounge of ambition
and a bountiful city of connections, clubs, circles, circuits and
opportunities’. V.P. or Vibhuti Prashad, the narrator of the piece,
calls the Indian democracy—Delhi democracy. And finally, there
is the bureaucratic machinery or “mystique” as it is called (p. 142)
144 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

which radiates in borrowed glory by replicating the performative

indices of political big brothers. Government offices are plastered
with portraits of the Prime Minister, slogans and buzzwords. The
intimidating infrastructure of government offices vests extortionist
power in the safari suit and the briefcase. The bureaucratic tribe is
painted with its signature tape on the mouth, parroting platitudes
and mindlessly emulating state agenda wearing the nationalism
of “on government duty” on their sleeves. The surveillance is a
key feature of the modern city, but its rampant display assumes
unprecedented proportions in the ethos of Emergency. The police
and its jeep are the purveyor of control interfering with their
movement, morals, ideology, and activity. The paranoia and fear
are heavily dependent on the police deployment in every nook and
cranny, in plain sight or lurking behind masks or darkness. The
enforcement license expectedly converts to torture, corruption and
violation of human rights (pp. 166-167). Inspector Chopra justifies
his servile mindset by saying, “We are all performers here, Master.
Performing to our uniforms. The same way that I am performing to
my khaki, you are performing to your khadi. (p. 187)” The graphic
novel’s multimodal methodology makes it a gifted medium to
expose the performative-pragmatic metonymy of power as against
its relational-realist, discursive-hermeneutic dimensions—the key
dimension in fascist events like the Emergency.
Frank Cunnigham (2009) argues “that a vibrant and oppression-
free democracy demands the ability of people effectively to challenge
or, indeed, to subvert the status quo” (p. 86). Different ways that
public spaces facilitate such subversion are through democratic
debate and deliberation, proposing alternatives to a status quo-
supporting form of democracy where citizen say is restricted to
voting and finally, calling attention to social problems and political
fracas needing solution. Tilly (2003) discusses the conditions under
which rebellions begin to brew in the city. This happens when the
state rides roughshod on citizens’ collective identity and sense of
justice; when the people have their own communal or ideological
ties; when people rally around a symbol or idea and also when
they penetrate the veneer of power performance to capitalise on
 Graphic Novels and Delhi: Contested Spaces in the Popular 145

the state’s zealously hidden vulnerabilities. Delhi Calm has its own
spaces of subversive resistance. If the newspapers face censorship,
lockdown or compulsion to become government mouthpieces,
there are several underground publications that proliferate. If
a sterilisation certificate becomes an eligibility criterion for
recruitment and promotion in government jobs, there are centres
that spring up to issue counterfeit certificates. If the police are
persecuting innocents, there are so-called ‘informers’ like HK who
shield them. Even the golgappa and nankhatai vendors are links in
the defiant chain of revolutionary rebels. People like HK and Parvez
Alam figure out that the best way to give it back to the draconian
government is to take the calamity as opportunity—one joins the
caucus party and the other makes money out of its sterilisation
drive. If MISA is the dreaded instrument of randomly arresting
people, then it also becomes the weapon of the underprivileged
like the beggars on the road and the bearers in the restaurant, who
spout the name to ward off the daily indignities that come their
way. Public spaces have their own power—the conversations herein
are banned as ‘rumours’ by the establishment because they have the
intractable strength of controverting the metanarrative. If we have
the President of the country, the three wings of the government
as well as the fourth pillar—the press—surrendering to the will of
the gimmicks happy queen and the experiments happy prince,
then we also have a wrestler (Raj Narain) standing in the power
performative space of the election campaign to drag the Prime
Minister to court on an unprecedented issue of misusing public
money and official position to electoral advantage. The government
monopolises popular culture and national television to telecast a
blockbuster on the day of the opponents’ rally, but the people still
fill the arena with their recalcitrant numbers. The recursive emblem
of redefining the very socio-political-philosophical construct of
democracy is of course, the Prophet or Jayaprakash Narayan as the
ideologue of Total Revolution. Never really a physical presence,
but more a ‘rallying’ point of civil and psychological ferment, he
provides the city the language to reject the democracy of tyranny in
favour of socialist, participative, and communitarian democracy.
146 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

We have the three non-heroes doubting, debating, and satirising

and Prophet’s preachings but eventually making a spirited effort
to organise “rally for change” (p. 234) as a reproach on the escapist
and cowardly ways of generally selfish and complacent citizenry
and redemption towards an unwavering commitment to preserve
the freedoms of democracy when the Emergency is lifted. Thus, the
relationship of the Emergency and the city is one of evolutionary
struggle, archetypal conflict and a moment of maturity for the
Indian democracy. The wounded city and the rebel city coexist in
the pages of Delhi Calm. The visual-cum-verbal grammar of Delhi
Calm is an eloquent shorthand that spans the spectrum of state-city
relationship through domination and resistance through shifting
subjectivities and spatialities.
Increasingly, the attempts to define or narrate the city have gone
the postmodern way—the idea of the city now uses the vocabulary of
‘neo-nomadic city’, ‘decentred city’, “non-place urban realm”, etc. to
deal with the schemas and signification defying city. In accordance
with the concept of the postmodern city as ‘displaced city’, writes
Harding, the postmodern city-as-text “represents a hospitable field
of play, a paradigm of difference, of linguistic free play, defying
unity, wholeness and the authority invested in a unified subject”
(Harding, 2003, p. 9). Everyone makes of the shifting postmodern
city what it speaks to him or her. Peter Preston and Paul Simpson-
Housley (2010) observe, “Yet even within this variety and plurality
of viewpoints, and without imposing rigid and constricting
taxonomies on the range of city experience, it is possible to discern
some common and recurrent groups of themes and motifs” (p. 320).
Some of these include alienation and oppression of the individual
in the mammoth presence of the city, illusionary freedom in the
anonymity of the city, urban decay and inner breakdown, violence
and corruption, and women as victims as well rejuvenators. Since
the 1980s, another factor has been added in the exploration of the
urban experience—and that is globality. Cities also garnered labels
like ‘World City’ and ‘Global City’ (Saskia Sassen, 1991), Megacity
(Friedmann, 1986), etc. Postmodern Delhi’s journey commencing
with economic liberalisation of the 1980s and standing today on a
 Graphic Novels and Delhi: Contested Spaces in the Popular 147

flurry of global flux has bewildered and churned the Indian as well
as the expatriate jetsetter in equal measures. In Sarnath Banerjee’s
Corridor, several non-linear narratives track the dilemmas and
psychopathologies of some of the regular clients of a “used books”
shop in the corridors of Connaught Place, New Delhi’s crumbling
crowning glory of a colonial-era shopping centre. A narrative that
has often been described as Kafkaesque, meanders into New as well
as Old Delhi through four oddball characters. There is Jehangir
Rangoonwala—the Socratic bibliophile bookshop owner of used
books guarding his domain with a keen eye inviting his customers
to buy as well as sell stories. One of the customers is Brighu, forever
searching for rare reads and rarer love. Kali is his girlfriend and a
documentary filmmaker who is as frustrated with the networks of
the movie-making world as she is with the commitment phobic and
erring Brighu. Next in queue is Digital Dutta vacillating between
desires and ambitions immersed in his reveries of Marx and H-1B
visas. Professor D.V.D. Murthy is a forensic surgeon traumatised
by the smell of death he has imbibed from the nightly autopsies he
performs. His unshakeable smell repels his seven-year-old daughter.
He is in search for a perfect perfume that will rid him of the smell.
And finally, is the old Delhi denizen, the just married Shintu,
engaged in a convoluted search for an aphrodisiac to perk up his
libido. While Banerjee has lived in many cities all over the world,
one city that forever remains close to him is Delhi. He is fascinated
as well as disenchanted towards Delhi, where he has spent quite a
few of his impressionable years. It is the city where he found his
vocation and inspiration. He confesses that he hasn’t met the kind
of people he met in Delhi anywhere else—“So there existed a very
colourful world. You just had to step outside and there were stories
waiting for you in each and every corner” (Banerjee, 2014, para 4).
His stories and characters indeed originate from these corners.
The space of Corridor is neither entirely autochthonous nor
entirely colonial. The coloniality is amply visible in the bold
brushstrokes with which Connaught Circus is painted but the
novel also incorporates a pioneering Indianness in its language
and visuals. Pictorial charts from our childhood (How to be an
148 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

ideal boy) used in innumerable study projects, formula Bollywood

scenes (Mother India the most evocative of these), volumes of
Phantom comics, the omnipotent Gelusil, the sign of good times—
Biryani, and the quintessential rickshaw puller dozing away in
his back-seat, are all painted with detailed proximity in the story.
Shintu’s tryst with the Hakim brings alive Old Delhi with Jama
Masjid and Meena Bazaar etched to perfection. The quaint feel of
the walled city is accentuated with images of tonga, pots brimming
with morning breakfast, Muslim dresses, roadside vendors, game
of chaupad, and of course, the great hakim or Unani medicine
tradition. The Connaught Place and Walled City locales are
augmented with the third housing dimension—the kothi (villa) in
South Delhi with the less privileged living in rented ‘barsatis’. The
nameplate on the Kothi mentions the particulars “M.A. Sood, B.A.
Karachi, L.L.B. Patiala” (p. 72). This is perhaps the best example of
the visual shorthand to condense the demography of these colonies
where refugee migrants set up base post-partition and today are
the wealthy landlords of premium property. The dangers lurking
in Delhi neighbourhoods are many ranging from the louts who
attempt to assault Dolly in the park above Palika Bazar, the bestial
uncles who attempt to offer Kali a lift every morning, the touts and
quacks that fleece like Shintu, or the humble mosquito who does
in the louts bashing Digital Dutta. The hand drawn amateurish
looking black and white sketches add a raw immediacy to the
feel. Only a few pages are coloured that add a psychedelic oneiric
twist to the tale. Rangoonwalla’s flash back is in the grey scale of
a bygone time and place. The semiotic heteroglossia are assembled
and embedded to contribute to the Indian flavour “including
paralinguistic features such as advertisements, maps, photos, which
function as examples of language as a local practice (Adami, 2009,
p. 6).” Corridor as the first Indian Graphic Novel (except for River of
Stories by Orijit Sen) follows the drift of the onset of postmodernity
in India by negotiating “local within the global” (Varughese, 2017).
Breaking away from the Amar Chitra Katha tradition in both form
and content, a more important breakthrough with postmodern
Graphic Novel like Corridor accomplishes is to “see” and “show”
 Graphic Novels and Delhi: Contested Spaces in the Popular 149

India not in mythological, folk or nationalist terms, but in self-

critical and self-reflexive terms. Corridor installs the Graphic Novel
as the ideal medium to depict the interconnected nuances of the
postmodern city and its influence on its residents.
Unlike, Delhi Calm, Corridor is largely located in the heart of
Delhi—Connaught Place. The title ‘Corridor’ does not refer to the
power corridors of New Delhi, but the corridors of this iconic
commercial and leisure district—designed in full imperial glory
by Robert Tor Russell—who preferred the Georgian architectural
grammar to the more commonly adopted Indo-Saracenic one. In
a city that is constructed in concentric circles, Connaught Place
forms the nucleus. The centricity of the location is important to
this graphic novel as it represents not just the most recognisable
iconography of the city of Delhi but also the patterns of its characters’
lives. The events do not play out in the ‘centre’ but are decentred to
innocuous corridors of the Outer Circle. Rangoonwalla re-centres
the co-ordinates of his marginality by grandiosely proclaiming his
corner to be the centre of his universe. Corridor has entrepreneurs,
migrants, aspirants, spiritual tourists and the sexually challenged
grappling with obscurity in their own ways and live like Digital
Dutta in their heads. Delhi means different things to all these
wandering people. To the postmodern Ibn Batuta—Brighu—it is
the place where he works, has an on-off love story with Kali and
an experience of life that ultimately converts into his vocation
of cartooning or writing. He is a collector and an adventurer.
He is one of those who has that distinct postmodern streak of
experience hunger. A compulsive collector of not just objects
but also phenomenon—the attempt is to fill the vacuity of both
personal and creative life: “What lies at the base of all these shifts
in the patterns of cultural consumption is the basic “experience
hunger” that characterises postmodern societies” (Richards,
2003). Deprived of the authenticity and intensity of experiences
of a cohesive self and society, denizens of postmodern societies
increasingly rely on curated narrations of ‘meaningful’ experience.
While the postmodern tourist is the architect of his or her own
cultural museum, the expressive idiom is supplied by consumerism
150 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

or materialism. Delhi is his exploration and accumulation, but he,

like so many of the migrants who arrive from other towns in Delhi,
has emotional and nostalgic ties located elsewhere. The Delhi—the
city of concentricity—Brighu lives in his own concentricity of native
town, chosen or professional residence and global citizenship. The
same is in reverse for the cultural tourist—Angrez Bosch—who is
in Delhi on his way from Rishikesh to Igatpuri between energy
pyramids and course in Vipassana before he ultimately lands back
in Newcastle. Digital Dutta charts the same course suspended
between working in a computer firm in Delhi and desperation to
transit to America on an H-1B visa but finding himself working
in villages using digital technology for land reforms in his Marxist
dreams. To Kali, the cut-throat environment of the city reminds
him of pieces of paneer tikka getting roasted on a skewer with
no scope for rescue or reprieve of any kind. The narratives are
thus born not from location or settlement but from dislocation
and neo-nomadism. Mobility, and not stability, is a part of the
narratives—quest, unrest, ambition, dissatisfaction, and infidelity
are the combust fuels of these lives. The act of reading and writing
postmodern Delhi is inextricably linked to the sense of “otherness”
arising out of the politics of liminality pervading the city as well
as its residents. Corridor, the Graphic Novel enters these in-between
spaces to find the resident cast in the mould of the city itself—
winding, groping, finding, hiding, and ultimately inconclusive.
Thus, in the postmodern Delhi Graphic Novel, city lives are
odysseys that straddle urban fissures of proximity vs. remoteness,
belongingness vs. loneliness, community living vs. blasé anonymity,
affluence vs. poverty, centre vs. periphery, civicism vs. alienation,
opportunity vs. monopoly and many such structural and existential
dichotomies splintered all over the urban landscape.
Delhi has the reputation of being a transit camp city, a city
without natives and a city that no one loves. It is an aporetic city,
a “crisis-object” where historical colonialism, neo-colonialism, and
the ethnic, religious and linguistic pluralisms and other fault lines
forever mark the ongoing contestations (Robbie Goh & Brenda
Yeoh, 2003, p. 5). The Graphic Novel writes the city of Delhi with the
 Graphic Novels and Delhi: Contested Spaces in the Popular 151

breadth and vigour of a flaneur without any of its commensal cast

qualifying for that title. While the term “flânerie” dates to the 16th
century, meaning idling or strolling, in the 19th century, it comes
to codify a new relationship of city-zens with their increasingly
complex post—industrialisation urban environments. Since then,
the flâneur has been used to articulate the modern urban experience,
urban spectatorship, class tensions and gender divisions inherent
in city structure, modern alienation, and origins and forms of mass
culture. The generic figure of the “flâneur” popularised by writers
like Baudelaire and Benjamin employs a distinctive gaze. It has also
been a muse and character to writers, artists and photographers.
In the 1860s, amidst the rebuilding of Paris under Napoleon III
and Baron Haussmann, Charles Baudelaire presented a memorable
portrait of the flâneur as the artist-poet of the modern metropolis:
To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at
home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet
to remain hidden from the world—impartial natures which the
tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who
everywhere rejoices in his incognito (Baudelaire, 1863, 1964,
p. 9).
The flâneur’s primary intent is to observe and document without
getting involved or making any comment. The flâneur’s peripatetic
gaze is directed mainly to the behaviour and deportment of people,
the kinesis in the city, the relationships which the dwellers share
with each other as also with their built environments reporting
life from the streets, edges and divides to aggregate the impact of
all psycho-spatial operations on the urban subject. The flâneur is
interested in getting to the root of these asymmetries that newly
built cities enshrine. By embracing the multiplicity and complexity
of the urban experience through an empowering extension of
the personal self or einfühlung (empathy), the erfahrung (alienated
subjectivity) of the badaud (gaper or gawker) can be transformed to
the erlebnisse (awakened contiguities) of the flaneur:
… the purpose of the flâneur was to produce erlebnis, to serve as
its advocate and exemplar, to suggest that all experience may be
152 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

collected in the form of images, from which one may always be

safely detached (Brand, 1991, p. 8).
The Graphic Novel itself is the flâneur as it traverses the fluid
spaces, lives, relations and asymmetries with all the diversity,
multimodality and ecstasy that only it can. Graphic Novel through
its multimodality is that evolved flâneur that produces what is now a
characteristic of modern technological societies—prosthetic memory.
A term coined and popularised by Alison Landsberg, it refers to a
new form of public cultural memory. Technologies of mass culture
like print and electronic mediums work as prosthesis for individual
memory by creating an external reservoir of cultural materials
which the individual memory cannot help but assimilate. These
memories, though artificial, are not superficial as they can shape an
individual’s subjectivity and identity. The Graphic Novel ambles
through the lanes and lives of Delhi with the flâneur’s purposive
detachment stacking up panel after panel of unforgettable images
of anguished alienation that through their soliloquy and interface
script the wisdom of postmodernity. The Graphic Novel, thus, is
one of those contested spaces of the ‘popular’ which though battling
with associations with comics, children’s literature, superheroes and
mythology, underworld noir, sub-literate readership, non-standard
language speakers and expectations of ‘literariness’ has eventually
come of age to offer distinct affordances in terms of the multi-
modal experience to write the postmodern city with distinctive
ambulatory and exegetic energies. The city-as-text in contemporary
Weltanschauung is eminently writable, a non-traditional medium
which has the permeability and affordability of multiple lenses that
can capture the stable and the unstable in a dialogic relationship.
Cities have been since times immemorial the stuff of dreams
which have only gone technicolour with mammoth industries
including tourism making them spectacularly imageable in terms of
opportunities and lifestyle. As against these narratives of allurement,
the Graphic Novel produces narratives of disenchantment that
befall many who bite this bait by courting the untold and unseen
in its disconcerting alterity. As twin contested spaces, the Graphic
Novel shares its soul with the “baharupiya shahr” as both in myriad,
 Graphic Novels and Delhi: Contested Spaces in the Popular 153

protean ways not just grapple with home and homelessness but
also eventually find their feet despite conflicts and chaos to impose
some order to live on. Sarnath Banerjee’s Corridor and Vishwajyoti
Ghosh’s Delhi Calm bring us face to face with challenges of modern
democracies and economies with a ‘graphic’ tour de force which
is tailor made for the aporetic city. Living in this aporetic city
is a kind of crisis management by building fortifications like an
idealised past, cult communities or regional identities. The graphic
narratives located within discourse of the popular rises above both
the verbal and cinematic medium by illuminating the interstices of
urban experience that tell not formulaic but eclectic tales of human
struggle as well as courage in dominant forms of urban habitability.
Thus, the graphic narratives located within discourse of the popular
emerges as that riddled flaneur whose attempts to make sense of
itself results in an urban gaze so subversive that the city becomes a
space, a metaphor, a game and a test that embodies the design of
violent evolution as well as the lesson of survivalist adaptation.

References
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presented at AIA Conference “Challenges for the 21st Century:
Dilemmas, Ambiguities, Directions”, University of Rome.
https://aperto.unito.it/retrieve/handle/2318/120423/18406/
Signs%20of%20postcolonial_postprint.pdf
Baetens, J. & Hugo Frey. (2015). The graphic novel: An introduction.
Cambridge University Press.
Bannerjee, S. (2004). Corridor. Penguin.
Bannerjee, S. (16 January 2014). Story Boxes: Sarnath Banerjee—
Interview by Payal Khandelwal. In Where creatives meet kyoorius.
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banerjee/
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edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/Baudelaire.pdf
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Benjamin, W. (1935). Paris: The capital of the nineteenth century. In

Charles Baudelaire: A lyric poet in the era of high capitalism. Verso.
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literature. Cambridge University Press.
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space, (pp. 85-89). Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
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default/files/nwl_article/2019-05/IIAS_NL78_11.pdf
 8
Political Exceptions and the Imperatives of
Popular Dissent: A Reading of I.S. Jauhar’s
1978 Emergency Spoof Nasbandi
Anupama Jaidev Karir

This chapter attempts to read I.S. Jauhar’s popular spoof on celluloid

Nasbandi (1978) as an important intervention in the cultural
discourse in the aftermath of the Indian Emergency of 1975-77. The
supposed exceptional aberration that the Emergency represented in
the default democratic discourse, still remains the reference point
for all things aberrational1. The attempt here, through the instance
of Jauhar’s film Nasbandi, is to explore the ways in which the space
of the popular imaginary becomes the site of popular resistance and
how popular narratives help articulate the sense of shared struggles
and trepidations and commit them to public memory.
The accent on popular representations is of considerable
academic interest in terms of how they map the field and index the
strains of discourse for common comprehension. As Stuart Hall
concedes, “Popular culture is one of the sites where this struggle
for and against a culture of the powerful is engaged: it is also the
stake to be won or lost in that struggle. It is the arena of consent
and resistance.” (p. 239).
One cannot over emphasise the significance of popular cinema
as a measure of evaluating political exceptions and mass resistance
movements. Popular cinema is indeed a crucial barometer of general
 Political Exceptions and the Imperatives of Popular Dissent... 157

public sentiment, since it is the very site of the ‘national’ narrative’s

unfolding in the domain of popular imagination: the space where
narratives of the political imaginary get variously and relentlessly
imagined, enacted and consolidated in collective memory.
This happens to be true of the Emergency as well, since some of
the very first extended creative narratives to emerge in its aftermath
happen to be in the domain of cinema. Nasbandi, unexceptional as it
may seem, did achieve cult status in the aftermath of the Emergency.
This film undertakes to enact the impact of the Emergency in terms
of how it plays out in the lives of ordinary people, it envisages the
social space as shared, participatory and inclusive, and insists on
verbalising the concerns of common people as they live through
the crisis. It is a simple film: it abounds in exaggerated flourishes
of populist sentiments. It also seemingly dabbles in stereotypes and
formulaic and reductions of the discourses of the Emergency; but it
is precisely in this aggravated presentation of the formulaic and its
carnivalesque inversions that the film draws attention to the flawed
logics of the Emergency. In its irreverent, inventive excess, it yields
a rich harvest of metonymic and metaphorical signification that
questions not only the crisis of the Emergency per se, but also the
framing democratic narrative within which it is located.
Nasbandi takes up the issue of mass sterilisation via
forced vasectomies which were the order of the day during the
Emergency as a population control strategy. The film tropes
the forced vasectomies as instances of emasculation of an entire
nation. The sentiment in hindsight may seem exaggerated but the
threat it references was real and serious enough. The sterilisation
experiment was as problematic as it was horrendous: Soutik Biswas
enumerates in his article “India’s Dark History of Sterilisation”,
as many as 6.2 million Indian men were sterilised in just 1976,
which, as Mara Hivstendhal puts into perspective, were 15 times
the number sterilised in Nazi Germany. As many as 2,000 men died
due to botched up surgeries2. Also, the eagerness of those running
vasectomy camps to meet targets often involved vasectomies
of men as young as 15 or as old as 75. The film tries to capture
the experiences of legions of men at the receiving end of forced
158 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

vasectomies, which in their humiliation and trauma were seen as

nothing short of castration. The restoration of order, in the film is
inevitably about the restoration of dignity and safety to men as a
precondition for the flourishing of the pan-national community.
All of this executed in terms of a fervently comical and inventive
narrative.
In the larger public domain, in response to the Emergency’s
silencing, debilitating censorship; its curtailment of liberties, and its
destruction of lives and institutions; emerged a massive proliferation
of a highly verbalised discourse against the evils of the Emergency.
In such a context, popular cinema, understandably offers parodies
of the Emergency: the parodic, carnivalesque inversions and
subversive humour are only the natural defence of the powerless
against the powerful. One might even argue that it is possible to
read these narratives as irreverent counters to the grand narrative
of the nation, because couched in the suffusion of the Emergency’s
tropes and rhetoric, what they enact is the perceived derailment
of the supposed democratic ideal. The levity of these films must
not be mistaken as an attempt to make light of the outfalls of the
Emergency, by what some would argue, the reasonably immune
culture industry. Emergency was by no means an easy time for the
industry even though, it was neither the beginning nor the end of
its acquaintance with censorship.
The cinematic meta-narrative post-Independence is significant
for another reason. Its own trajectory is a fitting analogy to the
default democratic discourse, as it negotiates the dialectic between
democracy and authoritarianism. On the one hand, it epitomises
the very spirit of creative freedom and exceeds discursive boundaries
with brazen impunity. On the other, it finds itself constantly
inscribed within the various matrices of state censorship: the
CFBC, the IB Ministry, government panels and committees and
indeed the law of the land. In fact, the practice of pre-censorship
or ‘certification’ is peculiar only to the cinematic mode of creative
production.3
Someshwar Bhowmik, in his book Cinema and Censorship: The
Politics of Control in India (2012), examines these routinely ‘revised’
 Political Exceptions and the Imperatives of Popular Dissent... 159

mandatory certification procedures in great detail. He illustrates

in instance after instance as to how they tend to be prescriptive,
though ostensibly their interventions are generally restricted to
sanitising films for overtly sexually suggestive content or violence
or anti-community/religion/nation sentiments.4 There is of course,
nothing innocent about the often long drawn certification protocols,
even though for most part they might seem to merely indulge in
cosmetic tinkering of ‘offensive’ content and that too inconsistently
and often arbitrarily.5 The elaborate censorship apparatus also
has more complex uses. Films/filmmakers are penalised for their
political/ideological persuasions at the promptings of the often
hostile IB Ministries.
While pre-release censorship has always been a given for
the film industry and the Emergency per se brought nothing
unfamiliar; the industry was not quite prepared for the degree and
extent of censorship that was unleashed upon it. This is why the
Emergency in cinema and cinema in the Emergency, make for a
very interesting reading.
B.D. Garga points out in an article titled “Turbulent Years:
The Indian Documentary,” how the Films Division of India (FDI),
had in varied measures been associated with the work of serious
documentary filmmakers such as Mani Kaul, Shyam Benegal and
Loksen Lalwani through the 1960s and the early 70s. With the
imposition of the Emergency it got in the business of acquiring and
producing laudatory pro-establishment films. The FD produced a
spate of films including S. Sukhdev’s pro-Emergency documentary
Thunder of Freedom (1976).6 The noteworthy documentaries by Anand
Patwardhan, Utpalendu Chakraborty, Gautam Ghose and Tapan
Bose were produced independently. They were often surreptitiously
made, secretly screened and smuggled elsewhere for safekeeping.7
As Bhoumik informs, as many as three films were denied
releases, some five were recalled after their release, and at times
prints were confiscated and destroyed (204). Amrit Nahata’s Kissa
Kursi Ka (1975/78) prints were confiscated and, as legend has it,
burnt. Anand Patwardhan, even post-Emergency, was not allowed
to release his documentary.
160 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

In such a scenario, popular parodies had the best chance of

survival, given that could often fly under the radar. The parodic
levity of popular cinematic narratives of the Emergency is neither
incidental nor deliberate: it is in inevitable. It is about the larger
crisis within the cinematic field in the aftermath of the Emergency,
where, as Ashish Rajadhyaksha points out in Indian Cinema in the
Time of Celluloid, the realist ‘objective’ mode stands completely
discredited, given how it is relentlessly abused as a medium of state
propaganda (248-249). The bizarre excessiveness of these films is
the evidence of the bizarre excesses of the Emergency in registering
itself at the level of the form itself. In their relentless mockery, these
popular parodies snatch for themselves a freewheeling mandate
which goes impressively beyond the acceptable bounds of academic
discourse by restoring the story of the Emergency as a common,
endured experience.
I.S. Jauhar’s film Nasbandi8 (1978) enacts the impact of the
Emergency on the everyday lives of ordinary people. In the very
fact that the film locates its vasectomy drama in the context of
the political crisis of the Emergency, where the authoritarian
style of governance of Indira Gandhi, a self-proclaimed sovereign,
triggers anxieties of a kind of national emasculation; it ceases to
be merely a rather straightforward spoof centring on the issue of
forced vasectomies during the Emergency. Emasculation here is a
state sanctioned crisis: and men are hunted prey. The troping of
‘nasbandi’, therefore, is crucial since it reveals the larger anxieties
about powerlessness and disempowerment in terms of the perceived
crisis of masculinity, where vasectomy procedures are almost
routinely seen as castration. Of course, the film both posits the
vasectomy—as—castration trope, and reassuringly demolishes that
assumption before it ends. In the very possibility of vasectomy
reversals, the film finds reassurance and a sense of empowerment,
which ties into the empowerment to redress the wrongs of the
Emergency and punish the perpetrators.
The prefatory song, “Kahan gayi wo teri ahinsa, kahan gaya wo
pyar/ Gandhi tere desh mein ye kaisa atyachaar”, offers the contextual
exposition to the film, seeks to formulate the larger Emergency
 Political Exceptions and the Imperatives of Popular Dissent... 161

discourse. Even though it is no more than an unabashed populist

hyperbole, it is noteworthy in so far as it offers to trace the
trajectory of nationalism in popular imagination. It is a paean
to Mahatma Gandhi: the crisis of the political imaginary is thus
addressed to the supposedly unimpeachable, infallible figure
of Mahatma Gandhi and the idealised contemplation of the
nation in Gandhian discourse. The song (in its vigorous, forceful
rendition by Kishore Kumar)9 exhorts Gandhi about the alleged
failures of the values of peace and love in the face of the atrocities
and brutalities which seem to be the order of the day during the
Emergency. Pictures of smiling Gandhi, (not unlike a smiling
deity), are juxtaposed with images of atrocities and brutalities, and
of course of the cartographically imaged nation in flames. The
song goes on to equate the Emergency with the British occupation.
The atrocities, brutalities are reminiscent of the British regime and
the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy is claimed to be routinely enacted all
over the country. The song establishes the Emergency as a travesty
of the worst kind, since now the perpetrators are not the others
but ourselves. The discontent with the nation has to do with
how the promise of freedom was never delivered to the subjected
millions. From such generalisations, the song progresses to the
specifics: cataloguing the entire range of excesses: surveillance,
fear psychosis, silencing of protest, gagging of press, youth locked
under MISA, razing of hutments at Turkman gate and bulldozing
of people, and so on. Yet, the song ends on a note of affirmation
with the declaration that the Gandhian promise would be fulfilled
through Jayaprakash Narayan. Jayaprakash Narayan is posited
as the Gandhi-like messianic saviour figure who is to usher the
country into Gandhi’s promised ‘Swaraj.’
The song with which the film begins, despite its sense of
general outrage retains a sense of smug optimism deriving from the
retrospective knowledge of the end of the Emergency. However, the
film’s narrative, with its parodic intent gets juxtaposed against the
self-righteous gravity of the song in question. For all its levity and
pedestrian humour, it inadvertently offers a lot more interesting
reading of the moment of the Emergency than the song with all its
162 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

pedantic seriousness. The film with its narrative couched in codes

of relentless frivolous levity is essentially defiant of the humiliating
oppression marking the Emergency discourse. It is almost as
if against the seizures of anesthesia associated with vasectomies,
comes the vociferous onslaught of conversations, escapades, and
inventive, fervent activity.
The film, quite simply plays out the everyday ministrations of
Emergency programmes on ordinary people and the everyday tactical
subversions. It presents a series of guerilla skirmishes between the
local Rai Sahab’s goons and the vigilantes, till the latter prevail over
the former, in the formulaic popular traditions of the victory of
good over evil. At one level it is an elaborate sequence of vigilante
trickery: a kind of tactical positioning for reversal of the balance
of power. The hypothesis is simple: in a scenario where formal,
structured authority is shown up as grossly illegitimate, completely
irreverent acts upsetting authority become a moral imperative. So,
in a situation where vasectomy procedures are forced upon people,
the scenes with outwitting, disrobing and tying up and thrashing
of phony police squads are not just mindless buffoonery: they are
instances of symbolic resistance.
On the one hand are the overlords of corrupt back channels
of political authority who, even when they have no legal sanction,
thrive on their proximity to the power centre. They appropriate the
entire police/bureaucratic nexus and rule towns like their personal
fiefdoms. On the other hand, stand the common heroes of
common people: the vigilante activists whose sole aim is to disrupt
the plans of the overlords. At one level all that the narrative offers
is a rather simplistic reduction of the Emergency as a flourishing
of corrupt, anti-poor practices. It is indeed an interesting instance
of how the average citizens quickly identify with the poor masses
as the authoritarian regime reduces civil society/citizenry to the
level of political society. The severe sense of disempowerment is
registered as a sort of national emasculation and thus aptly troped
in terms of vasectomy. The narrative has a smattering of references
to indiscriminate imprisonments as well as gunning and killings
as a routine feature of the Emergency, and yet, over and above all
 Political Exceptions and the Imperatives of Popular Dissent... 163

kinds of excesses, the final imaginable act of state violence is still

‘nasbandi’.
The film draws out elaborate caricatures of the collaborative
middle rung of political and entrepreneurial profiteers, who are
completely unprincipled and unashamedly wicked. The lead villain
is Banwari Lal Rai Bahadur Sahab devoted to Hanuman, addressing
him as ‘Maruti’, which is one of the many names of the deity. In
his telephonic conversations with whoever ‘from above’, he angles
for Padam Shri, (he already is Rai Bahadur), wants permissions for
his car factory to come through quickly, wants a license for his
arms and ammunition unit, and wants his cash transferred safely
to his bank account in Switzerland. The pitched political crisis of
the nation under siege, so painstakingly elaborated in the inaugural
song is pushed completely out of the picture as it were. Instead of
any real presence, political authority is represented through the
telephone: the modern means of communication over which decrees
are ordered and assurances are given. Those who issue decrees thus
have no idea of situations on ground zero and the collaborators in
their own interests paint bizarre pictures of happily vasectomised
men and indeed happily dispossessed families. The collaborators
completely understand the idiocy of the assumptions, but telling
the truth about the emperor’s clothes is not an option. What is also
important is that apart from the tenuous telephone connection, the
collaborators have no access to ‘those above’, and this telephone
snaps at will all the time. Rai Sahab realises the insanity of it all,
but, ironically, is just as blissfully deluded when his own informer
Rihana says just what he wishes to hear: “Janata to aap hi ke gun
gaa rahi hai.” Houses are being razed and people are being forcibly
herded to vasectomy camps, and they are still devoted to Rai
Sahab. The incident is a classic instance of authoritarian discourse’s
insistence on the belief in harmonious acquiescence, never mind
the nature of people’s ordeals. It is also an instance of authority
blocking off its own channels of communication.
Rai Sahab functions with clockwork precision, surrounded
by accomplices who report daily on matters entrusted to them
which they carry out efficiently: the matters pertain to forced
164 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

vasectomies, evictions, bulldozing of hutments and imprisonment

of protesters. In the midst of this authoritarian self-congratulatory
idiocy, is the disruptive intervention by the daredevil squad of the
vigilantes. The ones spearheading the charge are of course, heroes
of the masses: Anitav Bachchan, Kanauj Kumar, Shahi Kapoor,
Rakesh Khanna and Sevanand: mimicry artists et al., whose names
bear unmistakable resonance with the real heroes. Essentially
epitomising irrepressible virile energy and optimism, they decide
to fight against maleficent state practices. They watch out for each
other, operate as a team, demonstrating the power of collective
solidarity and the idea of security in numbers while the Emergency
is in effect. Their operations consist of guerilla warfare tactics,
outsmarting the authorities and thwarting their plans. Whether it
is the disrobing of the entire goon police squad or cross dressing
as ‘qawwals’ to gain access to Rai Sahab’s bastion or rescuing the
legions of imprisoned comrades from the jail.
Camaraderie is an important trope here. The narrative deals in
pairings, groupings and collectives of all sorts. This undoubtedly
draws from the Emergency being a collectively shared predicament
requiring collaborative effort to fight it; just as it requires a
collaborative effort to enforce it. All sorts of inventive escapades
and sequences are built around groups. Rai Sahab has his group
of protégées; the vigilantes are a group; and there are others like
‘brothers’ Johar and Rajinder; ‘friends’ Asrani and Rehmani and
even ‘sisters’ Rita and Nita, who address each other without fail
with the given epithets.
In the film, the higher echelons of power are seen as completely
deluded and misinformed. A persistent idea seems to be that if they
were not thus misinformed, they would perhaps govern better. At
some level, almost suggesting that if the political class listened to
responsible citizens instead of lumpen goons, there would perhaps
be no problem at all. It is not incidental that the very first sequence
in the film deals with the police superintendent’s resignation in
protest over Rai Sahab’s arbitrary interference in his department.
Rai Sahab is now free to run the police department together with
his own goon police squad complete with uniforms and weapons
 Political Exceptions and the Imperatives of Popular Dissent... 165

under the aegis of a convicted murderer and a feared dacoit.

Clearly, the authority of the likes of Rai Sahab and his accomplices
is seen at the centre of the imagined crisis. This positing of the
idea of legitimate authority (of the superintendent for instance),
as usurped by power-mongers of the current regime, is a persistent
theme in the film.
The distinction between the public and the private is seen
to disintegrate in the face of the crisis which threatens to cross
thresholds and invade homes. Spaces are not quite what they
seem to be: temples function as vasectomy centres and homes are
perpetually at the mercy of bulldozers or political goons. Home,
per se, is essentially a shared space: the space to meet, interact and
strategise. Rai Sahib’s henchmen are forever trooping into his
home; and the home of the people, managed and watched over by
the vigilantes, is indeed called ‘refugee camp’, the very location of
which has to be a secret lest it is bulldozed on Rai Sahab’s orders,
as it eventually is. In the final analysis, no homes are safe inviolable
havens: towards the end, all Rai Sahib’s protégées go scurrying
about, hiding in all kinds of places to get away from the vigilantes,
who manage to hunt them out anyway. The arch villains, Rai Sahab
and Shatru Mehra are driven to abandon home, town and nation,
but there is no place for them to hide.
Women are powerful here and malevolently so: a feature which
has more to do with the idea of the female sovereign and the
persistent sense of disempowered masculinity than any meaningful
empowerment of women per se. Women have crucial roles, even
if they are amalgamations of bizarre stereotypes. There is Rihana,
the spy and double agent with access to plans and strategies of
both the camps. Then there is the unnamed mother figure who
feeds, shelters as well as guides and demands to be in the know.
Interestingly, she is literally the martyred ‘Mother India’ here as she
stands unfazed up to an oncoming bulldozer. The ‘sisters’ Rita and
Nita, the nurses are state agents as well as saviours: they are both
scissor-snipping sisters as well as prospective brides. They accept
Johar and Rajinder as prospective grooms; settle the date and time
of the wedding, declare their love and help them escape from the
166 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

vasectomy camp. Of course, when the brothers do not make it to

their own wedding these spurned brides-to-be promptly perform
vasectomy procedures on them.
The leading lady in question is also a curious case. She is
resourceful, difficult to read, unprincipled in her allegiance to her
father’s agenda and frankly ruthless. The pretty daughter of Rai
Sahab, Miss Monica, comes to town by herself, riding high on
her success of a thousand vasectomy cases in Delhi. She is, quite
literally, the lone conqueror from Delhi, and as such has a definite
resonance. Her envisaged welcome is supposed to consist of a
conqueror’s parade and other celebrations. She is betrothed to her
father’s protégée and local vasectomy hero Shatru, and she displays
nothing more than a matter of fact willingness for the alliance.
As the distinctions between public and private get obfuscated,
public ambitions loom over familial spaces. At the same time,
there occurs also a bizarrely prosaic and sombre domestication
of the narrative. The nation’s romance sours and the discourse of
threatened masculinity turns essentially survival oriented: it lacks
the flourish of romance and sees respectable procreation as the
final means of self-validation. The usual tropes of love, courtship
and marriage undergo a startling transformation: the very notion
of romantic attachment is redundant here. There is no love to begin
with: and marriages are sites of negotiation or struggle, factoring
in all sorts of motives, none of which are essentially romantic. Two
wedding proposals (of Jauhar and Rajinder with Rita and Nita)
come out of a sense of jeopardy: the weddings do not happen (till
the end), but vasectomies do, at the hands of the brides to be. Miss
Monica achieves an unusual feat: she proposes marriage, almost
marries the hero, then marries the arch rival, dumps him when she
realises his trickery and returns to the hero as his wife (never mind
the wedding); all within a span of a day and a half.
The men are less complicated. They are mimics: caricatured
contenders and pretenders; both heroes and villains alike. There
is an instance where a bunch of men are being taken to a ‘family
planning’ centre. They walk meekly and wordlessly beside Rai
Sahab’s uniformed goons. The only protestations made are by
 Political Exceptions and the Imperatives of Popular Dissent... 167

their wives. The vigilantes of course get the better of this goon
squad, who this once as always, are fooled, stripped, tied up,
thrashed and beaten to pulp. Stripping as a sort of shaming is
an often-repeated ploy in the narrative and it is not without its
flippantly juvenile associations. ‘Brothers’ Johar and Rajinder too
are presented as juvenile over-grown brats, in the fashion of school
boys, appropriately dressed in half pants and repeatedly failing
their law entrance exams. Not only this, they also go scrambling
all over the place like a bunch of children to get away from the
family planning volunteers chasing them. Anitav, similarly, needs
Monica’s help to get away and then to get around and owes his
readmission to adulthood and masculinity entirely to her.
The narrative abounds in carnivalesque inversions of all kinds,
which occur as one too many interjections routinely upsetting
the discourse of authority in the film. There are all kinds of
instances of cross dressing, masquerade, magic, miracles and divine
intervention. Confusions galore as goon squads walk around like
police personnel and the vigilantes walk around like goon squads.
There is an instance where the vigilantes from the refugee colony
decide to disrupt the celebrations in honour of Miss Monica. They
troop inside the venue as qawwali artists. The high point of this
escapade is the presence of Johar and Rajinder, who pitch in as
these scruffy-faced, barely shaven, badly disguised courtesans and
lead singers in the qawwali performance. The qawwali itself is a
spoof on an earlier qawwali targeting the emergent political class
in Nehru caps, (referred interestingly as ‘Kashtitopi’) and their
nefarious designs: “hume to loot liya kashti topi walon ne. Meethi meethi
baton ne jhoothe moothe waadon ne”. The ‘qawwals’ are obviously
‘discovered’ and packed off to prison where they conduct a bizarre
rescue operation for their friends. An imprisoned sage performs
traditional yogic magic which enables imprisoned vigilantes to play
dead in captivity and then secure their release as ‘corpses’.
The narrative abounds in yet another set of interesting tropes
of divine intervention. It is almost as if the unnaturally disruptive
calamity of the Emergency requires a miracle to overthrow it (even
though in some measure it is a means to mock the supposed spiritual
168 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

assistance sought by the political leadership at the helm.) There is

quite a scramble for some or the other kind of divine intervention:
Rai Sahab is forever a supplicant before ‘Maruti Bhagwan’ and on
the advice of one ‘Yogi Narendra Karamchari’10 wears a black glove
as a talisman. The ‘brothers’ Johar and Rajinder effectively have
god Krishna preventing doctors from committing the outrage of
vasectomy on them by facilitating an endless supply of half pants.
The discourse of levity thus marks incessant ruptures in
this narrative marked by a pervasive sense of disempowerment,
but it does not (as it cannot) afford a narrative of unchallenged
disruption. In a rather striking instance of divine intervention
levity stands completely rejected. In a rare instance of earnestness
in this superlatively irreverent narrative, Monica in a long drawn
hymn invokes the entire Hindu pantheon and apparently visits all
sorts of temples and shrines praying for an offspring. She cites all
kinds of examples from Dashrath to Ram to Shravan Kumar to
emphasise the importance of progeny. Clearly, offspring is equal
to biological destiny is equal to the only quest worthy of pursuit.
She does actually manage the seemingly impossible with her almost
catatonically traumatised husband. Anitav breaks into a smile
and indeed into normalcy miraculously when he hears the doctor
announce “you are going to be a father.” This affirmation of his
masculinity, evidenced in terms of his paternity is crucial to him.
It is not incidental that the restoration of his normalcy
coincides with the lifting of the Emergency. Now, in the true heroic
tradition, Anitav sets out to set right all the wrongs committed
by his perpetrators by and large single-handedly: the logics of
camaraderie are tied to the sense of crisis, and once the crisis per
se is over, the lone hero takes over as usual. The villains are hunted
out one by one, and most end up at vasectomy operation tables.
Shatru Mehra flees and is pursued. Eventually, he runs out of both,
modes of transport as well as territory and makes a dash across
the India-Pakistan ‘border’ (a barbed wire fence) on foot. He is
promptly returned to the Indian side, where Anitav takes charge
of him. Rai Sahab flees his home, town and country and rushes to
London, where after an elaborate chase sequence in the Thames’
 Political Exceptions and the Imperatives of Popular Dissent... 169

waters, he accidentally crashes and goes up in flames along with

his boat, and the borrowed glory of his blonde wig and bowler hat.
Thus, he meets his nemesis in the very city whose colonial offices
arrogate him as Rai Bahadur in the first place.
The final badge of honour, awarded by the court of law goes to
the brothers Johar and Rajinder, the uncomprehending eirons, who
fail their law entrance exams all the time but display tremendous
moral rectitude. The brothers in doing their ‘duty’ achieve some
kind of honorary distinction in the course they have been failing
repeatedly to even enlist in. For them, this test case provides a
leap into adulthood and indeed matrimony. The court lauds them
for upholding “the values of society”11. These ‘values’ in the final
analysis, are about protecting ‘good’ law abiding people and their
marriages to ensure proper breeding and upbringing of children:
values that hinge essentially on ideas of paternalist authority as the
ultimate masculine aspiration.
Nasbandi, therefore, looks at the moment of the Emergency
as a ruptural moment, but it does so with a sense of retrospective
triumph of being able to contain the damage. Restoration of
paternalist masculinity in the private familial space is posited as
a precursor to the restoration of the patriarchal power balance
in the larger social/ political domain. This restorative narrative
is of a vigilante enterprise undertaken by a few courageous men
under the aegis of the law of the land against an adversary whom it
deliberately refuses to name.12
One must however be wary of reading too much in the
concluding ‘optimism.’ It is not necessarily the laudatory optimism
of the self-affirming kind offered in terms of any uncomplicated
“biography of the nation-state” (Pandey, 1991, p. 560). It is at best a
tentative impulse in the indeterminate pause of a known conclusion,
which must be read not in terms of realism but rather in terms of
the given structural/ formal propensities of the parodic flourish—
teetering precariously and forever in danger of toppling over.
In its relentless mockery, the film, quite like its vigilante
protagonists, escapes and slips past censures against the discourse
of resistance against the Emergency. In order to just be and ensure
170 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

its presence, it has to veer towards the exaggerated and excessive

implausible, in the fine tradition of proxy political satires like Orwell’s
Animal Farm. In the process, it snatches for itself a freewheeling
mandate which goes impressively beyond the acceptable bounds of
political as well as academic discourse by restoring the story of the
Emergency as a common, endured experience.

Notes
1. It is ‘live’ not only in discourse but also in dedicated ‘Emergency’
creative output: both Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s Delhi Calm and
Sudhir Mishra’s Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi bear testimony to
the lingering afterlife of the Emergency.
2. Mara Hivstendhal as referenced in Soutik Biswas’ article “India’s
Dark History of Sterilisation, paras 3 and 4.
3. Most filmmaking nations across the world have some form of
pre-censorship for the ostensible reasons of monitoring content
which is by definition highly accessible and essentially graphic.
4. Someshwar Bhowmik’s Cinema and Censorship: The Politics of
Control in India (2009) explores the issues of censorship in the
post-independence Indian cinema. This entire exposition relies
heavily on both the information assembled as well conjectures
drawn in this book.
5. Bhoumik lists a whole set of inconsistencies in the administering
of such protocols. The point of these inconsistencies is of course,
of more than just academic significance. At the very least in
their bid to have them reviewed and edited they could postpone
releases or suggest financially prohibitive changes, thereby
effectively stalling and sabotaging films.
6. Reetika, in a paper titled, “The Siege of Historical Reality:
Reimagining the Emergency,” draws an interesting comparison
between S. Sukhdev’s Thunder of Freedom and Triumph of the Will
by the pro-Nazi propaganda filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, given
that both hail the new orders with an almost romantic sense of
redressal of earlier wrongs.
7. B.D. Garga enumerates the political themes as well as formal
merits of the films by these documentary makers. Bhowmik
 Political Exceptions and the Imperatives of Popular Dissent... 171

assembles the inventive details of their attempts to scuttle the

kind of troubles they anticipated/ran into with the censorship
apparatus, including the case of smuggling prints of Prisoners of
Conscience outside the country (Bhowmik, 201-205).
8. I.S. Johar’s Nasbandi was released in 1978. ‘Nasbandi’ incidentally
is also the title of a short, nine-minute documentary on forced
vasectomies during the Emergency by Sandheep Pookkattur.
This film, as the epilogue spells out, is “dedicated to the unheard
screams” of the thousands of men who were forcibly sterilised
during the Emergency. The film builds a narrative of men as
victims: the attendant discourse of threatened castration is
played out much as the discourse of procrastinated rape is played
out vis-à-vis women. Motu Lal, an unsuspecting young nineteen
year-old victim, begging to be let off, is imprisoned before his
ordeal. In the cell, he meets an older man who tells him what
to expect ahead. Vasectomy is synonymous with castration,
the un-manning, the end of meaning. This is in some ways a
lot more earnestly registered than any kind of social/ political
disadvantage. This supposed abrupt termination of one’s
biological destiny quite literally is an instance of biopolitical
control where the body is the site of state intervention.
9. Kishore Kumar was widely reported to be a victim of political
vendetta, since he had refused to sing pro-Emergency jingles.
10. The reference is to the favoured Yogi Dheerendra Brahmchari
and his proximity to Indira Gandhi.
11. This is from the judge’s speech in commendation of their efforts
towards the end of the film.
12. The film which names just about everyone from Gandhi to
Nehru to Subhas Bose to Jayaprakash Narayan, steers completely
clear of any specific reference to Indira Gandhi.

References
Bhowmik, S. (2012). Cinema and censorship: The politics of control in
India. Orient Blackswan.
Biswas, S. (2014, November 14). “India’s dark history of sterilisation”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30040790.
172 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Garga, B.D. (1988, April-June). Turbulent years: The Indian

documentary. Cinema of India, 2.2, 32-37.
Hall, S. (1981). Notes on Deconstructing the Popular. In R. Samuel
(Ed.), People’s history and socialist theory (pp. 227-240). Routledge
and Kegan Paul.
Johar, I.S. (1978). Dir. Nasbandi. [Film]. Perf. I.S. Johar, Ambika Johar,
Rajendranath, Rakesh Chauhan, Tuntun, Jeevan.
Nahata, A. (1975/1978). Dir. Kissa kursi ka. [Film]. Perf. Shabana
Azmi, Utpal Dutt, Rehana Sultan, Manohar Singh.
Orwell. G. (2011). Animal Farm. Penguin India. (Original work
published in 1945).
Pandey, G. (1991, March). In Defence of the Fragment: Writing About
Hindu-Muslim Riots in India Today. Economic and Political
Weekly. 26 (11-12). 559-72.
Patwardhan, A. (1978). Dir. Prisoners of conscience. Documentary Film.
Pookkattur, S. (1976). Dir. Nasbandi. [Documentary Film]. SIAS Media
School.
Rajadhyaksha, A. (2009). Indian cinema in the time of celluloid: From
Bollywood to the Emergency. Tulika Books.
Reetika. (2014, February 4). “The Seige of historical reality: Re
imagining the Emergency.” http://smcs.tiss.edu/the-siege-of­
historical-reality-re-imagining-the-emergency/.
Sukhdev, S. (1976). Dir. Thunder of Freedom. [Film]. Films Division.
 9
Woman and Statecraft: Reading Meenakshi
Reddy Madhavan’s Novels in the Series
‘Girls of the Mahabharata’
Indrani Das Gupta and Shashi Prava Tigga

The Mahabharata, one of the greatest Hindu epics of the classical

world, in the words of Gouri P. Lad, “is a gigantic effort at myth-
making, condensing as it were, into mythic events, an ancient
and rich cultural tradition, with all its inherent complexities
and contradictions” (1991-92, p. 533). In one of the many recent
retellings and adaptations of this epic in an age bursting with the
re-imaginings of myths, Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan (an emerging
popular writer, a blogger and a freelance journalist) has sought
to provide a voice and a note of urgency to the forgotten ‘girls’
of the Mahabharata. Her two novels, The One Who Swam with the
Fishes (2017) and The One Who Had Two Lives (2018), not only
prove what Namita Gokhale has called “the currency and relevance
of the Mahabharata in contemporary times” (2018), but also seek
to reinstate the forgotten ‘girls’ of history and legend within our
modern understanding of the epic.
This study seeks to comprehend the position and status of
these ‘girls’ in the world of the Mahabharata, re-read in Reddy’s
two novels through a contemporary rendition of this timeless
epic. The three sections of the chapter seek to examine the fault
lines of gender, sexuality and desire within the ambit of statecraft,
174 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

networks of power and patriarchal order. The first section attempts

to localise these modern retellings of the epics amidst the upsurge
in the popularity of myths in the current Indian publishing
market/cinematic/televised terrain. This section will also read the
Mahabharata as an illustration of mythopoeic epic imagination,
which is at once religious, sacred, a politico-social document,
and an itihaasa in contravention to Western notions of history.1
The second section will provide the theoretical framework to the
whole paper, providing an overview of the linkages and networks
of statecraft and how it constructs women. The last section will
perform a close reading of the two texts chosen for this paper to
examine whether the ‘girls of the Mahabharata’ can shape their
identity and play out their desires in a polity where women were
incidental to state machinery. The examination of Madhavan’s
transformation of the minor historical figures to major ones is
not only a reclamation of voices long obfuscated by patriarchal
designs, but also an analysis of the negotiation of choices by these
‘girls’ in a manner that seeks to intervene in the processes of the
state machinery.

I
Boom in the Indian Publishing Market: An Appraisal of
Epics and Myths
In recent decades, the publishing/cinematic/televised world has seen
a veritable explosion in the retellings of myths or fictions cast within a
mythical idiom across the global market. If Ramanand Sagar’s 1987
classic television show Ramayana was a stupendous blockbuster in
the era of pre-satellite television, its rerun on national broadcaster
Doordarshan amidst the crisis of the Novel Coronavirus pandemic
in 2020 has attained a world record of 7.7 million viewership. And
likewise, the recent spectacular successes of the film Bahubali (2015,
2017) and the HBO mega television show Game of Thrones (2011­
19) are proof of the popularity of myths and their retellings in
popular culture. The examples of the very popular Chota Bheem
(2008) series, Sujoy Ghosh’s YouTube short film, Ahalya (2015),
 Woman and Statecraft: Reading Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan’s... 175

which has had a viewership of four million, the smashing success

of Amish Tripathi’s Shiva trilogy (2010, 2011, 2013) and then the
Ramchandra series (2015, 2017, 2019), the representation of Thor
and Loki in Marvel’s Avenger movie series (2012, 2015, 2019)—all
confirm that myth and mythopoeic imagination have emerged as
the newest idiom of our global popular culture. But why are myths
so popular amongst contemporary audiences? In what manner do
these modern retellings provide a particularised, unique slice of
history? The answer to these and other related questions on myth
and the generic world of epics is elucidated in this first section.
From being classified as fantastic as opposed to the rational,
to being termed false in contradistinction to the factual world
of history, to being described as primitive in relation to the
credentials of modern science, or understood through the prism
of religion, ritual and folkloric traditions; myths have continued
to defy categorisations and classifications. Nevertheless, several
definitions have emerged in recent years, ranging from decoding
the nature and function of myths to examining their significance
in terms of their cultural, political and social value. Most critics
and scholars have framed myths or mythopoeic imagination as
‘stories’ which seemingly connect the ancient world view of the
past with the modern ethos of the present, to lead to what Geoffrey
Miles (1999) has claimed, “shaping our arts, our institutions, our
values and philosophies” (p. 3). Mark Schorer has explained myth
as a part of a collective human experience; a means to structure the
meaning of our mundane lives. Schorer identifies myths as “the
dramatic representation of our deepest instinctual life, of a primary
awareness of man in the universe, capable of many configurations,
upon which all particular opinions and attitudes depend” (1968,
pp. 355–56). Even as myths are understood as epistemological and
ontological reservoirs of knowledge; the reason for its resurgence,
however, in the contemporary global world, lies elsewhere.
One of the primary reasons that there is a veritable renaissance
of myths across the global literary and pop culture terrain is that
myths can be read, understood, and communicated in various
ways. Anne Birell, in her book, Chinese Mythology, has succinctly
176 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

summed up by saying that the characteristic of myths lies in its

“polyfunctionality” (1993, p. 20). That the global cultural market
and the world publishing scenario have always appropriated myths
to narrate their own beliefs about society is an established fact.
However, the recent boom in the prolific use of myths in fiction
and pop culture is a testimony of this polyvalence of myths that
can be interpreted variously and “may be read in many different
ways and at several levels” (Birell, 1993, p. 20). Mythopoeic
polyvalence and multi-dimensional nature of myths has made
it convenient for writers, narrators, filmmakers, and other pop-
culture functionaries to use myths drawn from a vast repertoire
of various cultural sources like the classical mythology of Greece
and Rome, Celtic myths, Norse myths, Biblical myths, Hindu
mythology, etc., “to meet the exigencies of social, intellectual, and
political life” (p. 20). The plethora of mythic fictions, or, as we
term it—“mythfic,” cuts across all genres to comprise a means to
make sense of our constantly shifting, fluid world. In the variety
of responses, discussions, and debates opened up by these mythic
retellings of our ancient epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata,
the texts are seen as narratives rather than sacrosanct texts. These
transcreations point towards the commercial consumption of these
fictions and how the political, social, and cultural orientations of
contemporary times are in conversation with the governance of
ancient times.
The present study looks at the mythic retelling undertaken
by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan in her two works of fiction—
The One Who Swam with the Fishes (2017) and The One Who Had
Two Lives (2018), where she has used the rich, profound, and
deeply philosophical text of the Mahabharata to reimagine the
stories of Satyavati and Amba. Before discussing the character
and life history of the two female protagonists of Madhavan’s
novels vis-à-vis the dynamics and mechanism of statecraft, a brief
introduction to the text of the Mahabharata and the theoretical
implications of state machinery with its implications for women
will be discussed.
 Woman and Statecraft: Reading Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan’s... 177

II
Women in and Against the State: Mahabharata Down the Ages
In the words of Wendy Doniger, the Mahabharata is a “text for
all seasons,” a massive text comprising “75,000 verses—sometimes
rounded off to 100,000—or three million words, some fifteen times
the combined length of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament,
or seven times the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, and a hundred
times more interesting” (Doniger, 2015, p. 16). The Mahabharata
is a text that explores the age-old issue of dharma and adharma,
kinship, patrilineality, issues of sexuality and desire, equation of
an individual with a cosmogenic, divine force, and examination of
political and cultural tendencies of its day.
At the heart of the Mahabharata is the war between the two
clans of the Kurus—the Kauravas and the Pandavas—over the
kingship of their ancestral realm. Simon Brodbeck and Brian Black
describe the very scope and magnificence of this text to be read
in its title itself: “The ‘maha’ in the title indicates the text’s size
and importance, and the ‘bharata’ indicates that these two sets
of cousins, descendants of King Kuru, are also descendants of
King Bharata, whose name is now interchangeable with that of
India itself” (2007, p. 1). The depiction of this eighteen days’ war
is mingled with the sacred foundational text of the Hindus, the
Bhagavad Gita, exploring the issues of dharma, polity, governance,
and the ethical nature of our choices and actions. However, to
term the Sanskrit Mahabharata as the ‘ur-text’ is technically wrong
because this philosophico-political text has seen several mutations,
adaptations, and literary transcreations over a time period of three
hundred years during which it was compiled. This “palimpsestic”
text (Kanjilal, 2017, p. 4) “recurs throughout India in a wide variety
of literary, performative, ritual, and political contexts” (Brodbeck
and Black, 2007, p. 1).
The stories and myths of the Mahabharata recited in homes and
public spaces generations after generations have led the form of this
colossal epic to remain fluid and “open to continuous additions
and accretions, empowering the epic with an unusual capacity
178 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

to cast and recast moral values and mores” (Lad, 1993, p. 225).
This fluidity of interpretation is one of the many reasons that the
contemporary mythic adaptations, retellings, and transcreations
have continued to use this religious, philosophical, and political
text of epic proportions to register the “changes and upheaval of
centuries” and to reveal the absences in the existing laws, political
and cultural mores of today (p. 225.). The interpretations of the
Mahabharata over the years have not only, as Sucheta Kanjilal
rightly said, “supplemented oral retellings of the same stories by
family elders” but also, in these the “legacy of storytelling, sharing
these stories through newer, more far-reaching media outlets
reinforce[s] pride in a common cultural heritage” (2017, p. 154).
The popular retellings of this epic have led to the construction of
the nation; as Arjun Appadurai states, “[t]he modern nation state
grows less out of natural facts—such as language, blood, soil…and
more out of a quintessentially cultural product, the product of the
collective imagination” (p. 161). During the nationalist struggle, the
Mahabharata and Ramayana were used by intellectuals and political
leaders to navigate the networks of power exuded by the narrative
of colonial modernity. However, this constant renegotiation with
the modernity of the colonial present through the contours of the
epical world of the Mahabharata and Ramayana also led to the
inheritance of “age-old culturally rooted caste, class and gender
hierarchies” (Arora, n.pag.).
To explore these hierarchisations in the Mahabharata,
particularly in its connotations for women, let us understand the
term ‘statecraft’ itself. Statecraft, according to Dennis Ross (2008),
“is the use of the assets, resources and tools” (p. x) to secure the
state’s interests against other states. The idea of statecraft involving
bio-political governance, ensures the security, the continuity
and a recognition of what sets it apart from other states. In the
introduction of Margaret Thatcher’s book, Statecraft (2002),
we are told that despite the rise of mobile capital and global
communications network with information integration of all
world markets available in a jiffy, states still hold a fundamental
importance for society, economy and identity of individuals.
 Woman and Statecraft: Reading Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan’s... 179

Thatcher further mentions that it is only the state that comprises

a “legitimate coercive power” (n.pag.). So, how does the state with
its established legitimacy construct women in the world of the
Mahabharata and inform the dynamics of gender and sexuality in
its retelling in Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan’s fiction?
In the mechanisms of statecraft with its emphasis on the
governance of resources, it is women, rigidity of gender roles
(masculine and feminine roles were fixed and differentiated
on exclusive terms) and the control of sexuality of women that
have emerged pivotal to the perpetuity of the state. As Elleke
Boehmer (2005) suggests, “Gender has been, to date, habitual and
apparently intrinsic to national imagining. … The production of
a homogeneous entity such as [the nation] … hinges, to a large
degree, on the determination of the ‘subject’ position of women for
its articulation…” (p. 5). The contemporary fiction and pop cultural
representations of the mythic world of our classical Hindu epics
exposes “the feminist voice of dissent and subversion” articulated
in and against the exigencies of statecraft patterned in terms of
“the pervasive pattern of subordination and limitation that have
hampered women through the ages” (Shah, 2017, p. 80).
Madhavan’s two novels that form the crux of this chapter engage
in this constitution of the duality of women breaking forth from
the hierarchical grids of the state machinery and being bound by it.
Her representation of Satyavati and Amba/Shikhandini/Shikhandi
traverses the terrain of complex socio-political relations nurtured
within the unit of familial institutions vis-à-vis the larger dynamics
of the state and cosmological forces. Madhavan’s rendition of these
problematic characters of history allows us to cast a fresh look at
the silenced and marginalised characters of history.

III
She’s Alive, She Speaks, She Tells a Secret: Positioning
Madhavan’s ‘Girls’ in the Statecraft of Today and Tomorrow
Madhavan’s two novels delve deep into the ‘polyfunctionality’ of
the Mahabharata through the characters of women like Satyavati
180 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

and Amba/Shikhandini/Shikhandi to present to us not a glimpse

of an alternate history but rather, to see in their choices what was left
unsaid or unimagined in historiography. In the novel, The One Who
Swam with Fishes, Satyavati, in her daily imaginative meanderings
used to play different roles so as to circumvent the debilitating
influence of her familial roles and duties: “I could be anyone, I
could be a princess or a trader, a travelling Bedouin or a courtesan’s
daughter. Every week I tried on new identities for myself, like
clothes…. to see which way I should be headed” (Madhavan, 2017,
pp. 134, 139). Satyavati might have been controlled by patriarchal
forces and the demands of statecraft but, as her imaginative
recreations tell us, they could not defeat her. Both Satyavati and
Amba/Shikhandini/Shikhandi, in their various ways, seek to
interpose themselves in a world where the state commands via the
demands of karma and moksha and who they wish to be.
In her Author’s Note to the book, The One Who Swam with
the Fishes (2017), Madhavan states that her project in embarking
upon this retelling of this great epic from the vantage point of
the ‘storyteller’ was to “set out to write about the girls of the
Mahabharata because I wanted to explore what they were like before
the grand political machinations came into play. I wanted to pay
homage to the people they were before they were wives and mothers,
and to see what sort of motivation might have led each one on
their paths” (p. 31). It is interesting to note that Madhavan uses
the subtitle ‘girls’ to foreground a proposition that reinvents the
trajectory of history that Mahabharata has so far silenced. Before
Satyavati became entrenched in history as the matriarch of the
Kuru dynasty or before Amba entered into the annals of folkloric
and mythical history as the abducted and rejected woman reborn
as ‘Shikhandi’; they were ‘alive’ and had stories that deserve to be
told. Thus, before entering into the cultural imaginary respectively
as wife to a great king of legend and as a warrior who was indirectly
responsible for the death of one of the greatest warriors who walked
upon the earth, they were first individuals who had their dreams,
sexual desires, hopes cherished and lost, triumphant motivations
and defeated intents. These girls were more than merely being
 Woman and Statecraft: Reading Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan’s... 181

companions or commodities to be accepted or rejected by men.

These were girls who were ordinary in their emotional depths and
yet, extraordinary in how they navigated the difficult terrain of state
machinery. Madhavan’s understanding of these neglected women
of the ancient epics is at once interventionist and revelatory. The
‘Girls’ emerge not as shadowy figures of legend but much more—
real and alive, or as she terms them, modern depictions of women
making their choices. The author’s intention is to resituate these
women where they belong, “at the heart of everything” (2017, p. 24).
The story of Satyavati as a woman ahead of her time exemplified
in her relationship with Sadhu Parashara is pretty well known. Their
sexual union led to the birth of Vyasa, interestingly the author of
this colossal epic as well as the central factor in the continuance
of the Kuru clan. After this episode Satyavati wins the favour of
King Shantanu, the ruler of Hastinapura, and ends up being not
only the queen consort to Shantanu but also the mother of future
kings. From a ‘matsyagandhi’, Satyavati’s journey to becoming
the ‘divyagandhi’ of legend is remarkable. Madhavan follows the
basic plotline of the Mahabharata wherein Satyavati deposes the
greatest warrior by making inconsiderate demands on the deserving
rightful heir of the Kuru dynasty, Devavrata, son of King Shantanu
and the Goddess Ganga; consequently leading him to take his
terrible vow to remain celibate all his life and thus, to claim the
title of Bheeshma. However, in doing so she provides a glimpse of
a woman who, though controlled by the state and its units, resorts
“to strategies in order to subvert the dominant and the powerful to
make space for [herself]” (Shah, 2017, p. 83). Satyavati is not simply
the pawn of the state and the object of the male gaze but the girl
who “toss[ed] a water pot on the road … to see what would happen”
(Madhavan, 2017, p. 70). In this retelling, Satyavati emerges as a
woman who took her chances to carve a space for herself, and in
doing so, she literally writes her way into history.
Madhavan locates Satyavati’s oppression primarily within
her family where her position is marginal. As a girl completely
forsaken by her adopted mother and her worth being no more
than that of a servant within the family, Satyavati cuts a lonely
182 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

figure. Anne McClintock (1995) locates families at the intersection

of gender, race, and nation. She writes, “the family image came to
figure hierarchy … and thus became indispensable for legitimating
exclusion and hierarchy within non-familial social forms such as
nationalism, liberal individualism and imperialism” (1995, p. 45).
She is constantly reminded of her duties and obligations towards
her foster family and is reviled by her foster mother and even her
foster brother (whom she was ever protective about) on account
of her fishy smell. Given an opportunity by destiny, Satyavati, in
Madhavan’s retelling, rows a boat to the magical island to seek
her own deliverance. In this imaginative transcreation, Satyavati is
not a weak princess/lowly fisherwoman waiting to be saved by her
Prince Charming; rather, she appears as a woman whose secrets are
yet to be unpacked and explored. Satyavati is shown here as a girl
who can perform many tasks apart from preserving the patrilineal
line. According to her, she, “can do a lot more than clean fish and
row people across the river...can call birds to me with a single, low
whistle. … [know] which herbs will make you hungry, not hungry,
less tired, will rock your child to sleep, will give you sweet dreams.
Not small skills, these are things people would call magic …”
(Madhavan, 2017, pp. 82, 84).
Addressed in the Mahabharata as well as in Madhavan’s
retelling as ‘matsyagandhi’—the girl with the fishy odour, it would
seem at first glance that her lower caste status is the only identity
that determines her place in the Hindu social hierarchy. But, on
another level, this is a subtle insertion by the author to embody her
life beyond that of a queen. It is as if this peripheral character of
history has made absurd demands on history to ensure a place for
herself not as a companion to the king or as the mother of kings,
but as a girl who knew how to chart her own history amidst the
patriarchal designs of the state machinery.
The island on which Satyavati gets rid of her fishiness emerges
as a feminine space albeit created by a man, Sadhu Parashara. Her
visit to the island can be seen as a ‘coming of age’ narrative and a
‘rite of passage’ on various counts. This utopian island materialises
as a place where she finally becomes aware of her own body as Sadhu
 Woman and Statecraft: Reading Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan’s... 183

Parashara becomes instrumental in her sexual awakening. As much

as this island seeks to tame her mind and body and control her
desires, it only appears as an interlude in her life that remains a
secret to which only she is privy to. Her relationship with Parashara’s
wife, Dvipaa-ma goes beyond the narrow designs of the divine order
of the state. Satyavati is shown as both an opportunist and selfish
in her manner of navigating her destiny as she envisages, in a world
that only speaks for males (Kings, Brahmins) and about masculine
interests. She can not afford to remain vulnerable, so she chooses
her own roles, her own stratagems to refuse the value-laden meaning
of fishy odour as weak, powerless, and a puppet of the state.
The story of Amba as retold by Madhavan in the second book
of the ‘Girls of the Mahabharata’ series closely parallels the multiple
versions of this epic that is available in fiction and performative
accounts. Daughter of the King of Kashi, Amba, along with her
sisters, Ambika and Ambalika, is on the verge of getting married
to the prince of her choice in a lavishly arranged swayamvara
organised by her father. However, on the fateful day, she along
with her sisters is abducted by Bheeshma as brides for his younger
step-brother, Vichitraviriya, the scion of the Kuru dynasty. Amba
requests Bheeshma to return her to Kashi as she loves Salva, her
betrothed. Her request is acceded, but Salva rejects her on grounds
that she has already been won over by another Kshatriya. Dejected,
she approaches Bheeshma to marry her who refuses on account
of his vow of celibacy to his father. Believing Bheeshma to be
responsible for her humiliation, she undergoes a severe penance
and is granted a wish that in her next birth she will be reborn as
a mighty male warrior who will cause Bheeshma’s death. In her
next birth, she is born as Shikandini—daughter of King Dhrupad
of Panchala. Dhrupad raises Shikhandini as a male adept in the
art of warfare and statecraft. He later gets Shikhandini married
to princess of Dasharna, daughter of Hiranyavarna, who on the
wedding night, realises to her dismay that her husband is actually
a female. Amidst the confusion, the betrayal felt by her in-laws and
the declaration of impending war on the kingdom of Panchala,
Shikhandini seeks refuge in a remote forest. Here, a Yaksha named
184 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Sthunakarna swaps his sex with that of Shikandini. Consequently,

Shikhandini now becomes Shikhandi, a man who performs all his
masculine duties with aplomb till the rest of his life. And, in the
great war of the Mahabharata, Arjuna uses Shikhandi as a shield
and finally manages to kill the ageing patriarch, Bheeshma.
This is the bare plotline which Madhavan uses to project her
imagining of Amba, the only character in this great epic who chose
to give up her life in order to exact revenge in her next birth. But,
the fascination with the twice-born Amba/Shikhandi/Shikandini
character is not that she was the prime cause of Bheeshma’s death;
rather, the interest in her narrative rests on two reasons. One, the
anger, determination and resilience attributed to the character of
Amba as she goes about to restore her status exposes the apathy
of the masculine state and simultaneously underscores women as
tools of subversion. Second, the in-between status of Shikhandini/
Shikhandi subverts the pretensions of statecraft’s masculinist ideals.
Amba realises that as a woman, it is her “duty” “to get married
and bear children and so on and so forth till the end of time”
(2018, p. 879). And with no husband, even if the person was for
namesake, a woman is destined to lead a meaningless and pitiable
life. However, simultaneously, her oppressive condition within the
state does not occlude her awareness that the very institution of
marriage is an economic proposition. As Luce Irigaray suggested
(1980), women were “commodities” in the homosocial order of
men, merely to be traded and exchanged as barter between menfolk
(n.pag.), Amba recognises that her condition was “no different from
his prize elephants” (2018, p. 1509). The proper role for women was
to serve the cause of the continuance of the patrilineal line; a fact
that completely structures the epic world of the Mahabharata.2
Despite the claustrophobic world that Amba finds herself in,
she at least felt secure and confident about this familiar world.
However, her rejection by both her betrothed and abductor
unravels the sham that women of all ages find themselves in. In
her rejection, Amba saw her whole world collapsing to the extent
of realising that her love for Salva was no more than a recognition
of the lack of choices in her life dominated by her father’s statist
 Woman and Statecraft: Reading Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan’s... 185

control. The apathetic state, represented in the figure of Bheeshma,

is not willing to relinquish a vow made to a dead father. However,
this paternalistic state is willing to let a girl suffer because she
dared to make a choice. Amba’s poignant and urgent cry at the
injustice meted out to her—“[s]top deciding things for me! That
was the only time I had a choice. A choice! To marry whomever
I wanted! And you took it away from me” (2018, p. 1091)—shows
Amba’s constricted status, trapped in a system where if she chooses
to challenge the terms of patriarchy it would lead her to lose her
honour and life. Nevertheless, in Amba’s rage, one can attest to
what Shalini Shah posited, “feminist consciousness at its pristine:
an articulation that attacks the very heart of patriarchy …” (2017,
p. 81). Amba dies with the knowledge that the state as exemplified
by her father, her companion Salva and, one of the greatest warriors
on earth, Bheeshma, all negate her desires and violate her very
existence. And therein lies the story of the resurrection of Amba.
It is this resurrection, a narrative of massive proportions that
destabilises the very foundational basis of the state. As much
as Amba realises that a woman who seeks to pursue her desires
without being secured in a marital relationship is better dead,
and yet, it proposes an alternate reading of the state. Even as the
elision of women from statecraft is underscored, we are given the
description of Amba cast in an erotic and sensuous light. Amba’s
depiction by Madhavan is of a girl who feels and desires all that
life has to offer, “I am all sensation, all want” (2018, p. 100). Robert
P. Goldman (1993) affirms, “although women are objectified and
commodified as desirable and coveted male possessions, the very
sexuality for which they are so highly prized is, at the same time,
represented as dangerous and destructive to men” (p. 382). The
patriarchal statist framework of an ideal woman as spiritual is
nullified in Madhavan’s characterisation of Amba, and though she
dies a bitter death, in her very act of desire, Amba transgresses the
limits ordained by the patriarchal state.
Simultaneously, the vulnerable nature of masculinity, the
ideal that animates the world of the Mahabharata, is also made
apparent. In Amba’s fascination for her abductor despite her loss
186 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

of honour and love, the mechanism of statecraft gets dismantled.

Amba’s admiration for Bheeshma stems not because he is a great
warrior but that she found in his persona and bearing a man torn
by the demands made upon him by the logic of statecraft. She
finds Bheeshma a lonely man, similarly lost and confused as she
is as if he is emasculated. His forlorn condition mirrors her own
dilemmas where an individual has to sacrifice a lot in order to fit in
within the larger issues of Dharma. Even as Bheeshma, in deference
to his father’s wishes remained a lifelong celibate, this vow opens
up the text for further scrutiny.
Within the logic of statecraft during the time of the Mahabharata,
even as women tried to secure a foothold in families as wives and
mothers, men were constantly striving to embody their masculinity
in terms of their virility, strength and heroism. Bheeshma’s terrible
oath can be construed as an instance of impotency and thus, the
lack of virility. He is symbolically castrated and, interestingly, by
the agency of a woman: Satyavati. His symbolic castrated status not
only leads to his eventual death but also, leads to the subsequent
downfall and disintegration of the powerful Kuru state. In an age
where statecraft, using the philosophical discourses on Dharma,
sought to define itself by the subordination and domination of
women and “oriented to accommodating the interests and desires
of men”, men were exhorted to prove their masculinity in terms of
strength and their procreative faculties (Sahgal, 2015, p. 6). That the
greatest warrior is no better than an effeminate man articulates the
fragile nature of the masculine state. And it is in this scenario that
the figural presence of Shikhandini/Shikhandi, the third gender/
transsexual character, literally punctures the very Dharma of the
patriarchal state built on the notion of masculine ideals of virility
and fertility. Goldman states, “without question the most complex
and elaborate single instance of a case of sexual transformation
in literature” is that of Amba to Shikhandi and one of the few
significant accounts of female to male transsexualism in ancient
and modern literature” (1993, p. 382).
At one level, Amba’s reincarnation to Shikhandini is a failure
of tragic proportions as in her rebirth too, her chance to avenge
 Woman and Statecraft: Reading Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan’s... 187

her loss from Bheeshma is a non-starter since women were not

allowed to enter the battlefield. Her eventual recognition that only
by being a man, she will be relevant to the state and can protect
her family and kingdom leads to her transformation as Shikhandi,
the male warrior, effected by the sympathetic understanding of a
Yaksha. Yet, this transsexual character, a persona who inhabits the
in-between state, unlike the gender binaries firmly entrenched in
the machinery of the state, tells a different story. Despite proving
himself to be a man by becoming a father to sons, Shikhandi lurks
on the horizon of consciousness as a female. Madhavan’s portrayal
of Amba/Shikhandini/Shikhandi suggests the artificiality of
gender roles and the hierarchisation implicit in them. The gender
bending of Shikhandini/Shikandi displays the nature of statecraft
as fragile like the temporal status of Shikhandi’s manhood and the
“failed masculinity” of Bheeshma (Goldman, 1993, p. 382). Amba
did die, and Shikhandini/Shikandi was not directly responsible
for the death of Bheeshma, yet this liminal character, forever
marginalised in the rubric of the state machinery, occasioned the
downfall of the Kuru line. The patrilineal dynasty that informs the
foundational logic of the state is, in a moment of history, sustained
with the stratagem of one woman and is, on another occasion, the
beginning of its end.

Conclusion
In Madhavan’s dramatisation of other minor characters like Utsarg/
Lalitha, we see further the patriarchal claims of the state being
exposed in its pretensions to protect its subjects. Through Utsarg,
a reincarnation of Lalitha and a brother figure to Shikhandini/
Shikhandi, we are provided a glimpse of the workings of class.
Utsarg seems to be a parallel figure to Eklavya, the mythical
warrior of the Mahabharata whose thumb was cut off despite him
being as meritorious as Arjuna owing to the fact that he belonged
to the lower strata. As much as these characters (Dvipaa-ma,
Lalitha, Utsarg) reflect the power of the state, in their sisterhood/
brotherhood with Satyavati and Amba/Shikhandini/Shikandi, they
create a space which can be termed as ‘homoerotic’. This homoerotic
188 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

space/identity is further accentuated in the representation of the

‘magical island’ in the first book of the girl series and the ‘forest’
in the second. These places are embodied as transformational sites
as much within as outside the state that disrupt the categories of
gender, class and caste. While narrating Satyavati’s story, Madhavan
titles her chapters as ‘Then’ and ‘Now’ to go back and forth in
time instead of using the traditional method of serialising the
chapters. This lack of specificity of time in which the events related
to Satyavati were supposed to have taken place draws attention to
the continuity of the sad existence of women oppressed far too
long by the violent ideological underpinnings of the state and
simultaneously, showcases their struggle to voice their desires.
The premise of Madhavan’s ‘girls’ lies in the fact that we see in
their exertions to be heard and remembered a life that mirrors our
own motivations, hopes, fears and desires. In an early part of the
narrative, Amba notices the eunuch guarding her sleeping quarters
and says, “I feel almost like we should be running towards each
other, there is a feeling like we have met before” (Madhavan, 2018,
p. 44). Separated by thousands of centuries, the fact that women
continue to be violated, dehumanised and yet remain to tell a story
is the significant impetus of Madhavan’s retellings. Amba’s tragic
query if Bheeshma, a representative denizen of the state, would
remember her and her story is answered in this retelling; that these
girls might have had a tragic past, but they have now returned to
reclaim their today in our remembrance of them.

Notes
1. Myths in Western culture are primarily understood as being
antithetical to historical analysis. However, our reading of
myths is akin to a historico-political document following what
Malinowski calls “statements of reality, products of a living
faith, intimately connecting word and deed” (as cited in Mitchell
1979, p. 129).
2. The Mahabharata’s patrilineal line is a myth according to Arti
Dhand, because the survival of lineage is undertaken not by
 Woman and Statecraft: Reading Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan’s... 189

any of Shantanu’s sons but by Satyavati’s eldest born, Sage

Vyasa, son of Rishi Parashara. Dhand terms Vyasa’s entry in the
narrative as the nodal points for the movement of the epic plot
(2004, p. 35).

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Arora, B. (2019). Writing gender, writing nation: Women’s fiction in post-
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Kanjilal, S. (2017). Modern mythologies: The epic imagination

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 IV
Moving Beyond: Social Media and
New Spaces
 10
Interrogating Social Media and Romance:
The Case of Durjoy Datta
Aisha Qadry

Renuka Chatterjee, editor-in-chief of Westland/Tranquebar says,

“When we were busy celebrating Indian writing in English, a new
generation of readers looking for racy, quick reads was coming up”
(Kumar, 2010). With the publication of Chetan Bhagat’s celebrated
Campus novel Five Point Someone (2004), the Indian reader turned
towards Popular Fiction with a gusto that was never seen before.
The book sold around 700,000 copies, making it one of the highest
selling books in the Indian market. After Bhagat’s successful innings
with Five Point Someone (2004), One Night at a Call Centre (2008)
and The 3 Mistakes of My Life (2008), Indian popular literature grew
impressively alongside an expanding readership and impressive
profits. Bhagat’s popularity catapulted him towards unprecedented
success turning him overnight into a star. His books were widely
read across the country despite the criticism they received for their
sloppy language and lack of literary merit. Bhagat’s trailblazing
success in the 2000s was replicated by a new brigade of engineers
and management graduates-turned-authors that held the baton of
Popular Indian fiction giving it a new contemporary flavour that
appealed to the Indian reader. Among this upcoming breed of
authors was a young engineer and marketing analyst named Durjoy
Datta who would marry the scrumptiousness of Mills and Boon
Romances with the Indian masala fiction.
196 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

The new millennium has seen Popular Fiction, also referred

to as Commercial Fiction, rule the literary market in India with
young and frothy romances and tales of rebellious and adventurous
20-somethings with the popular genre of Campus Fiction. These
genres reflected the ethos of the semi-urban and urban Indian youth
that was struggling to find its voice in Indian canonical fiction
(Jhala, 2012). The new narratives were truly Indian in their appeal
with a generous sprinkling of Hinglish words; and while set in the
major cities of India, discussing the issues of the average young
Indian who could be from any part of the country. Unlike Chetan
Bhagat and Amish Tripathi who were nearing their forties, Durjoy
Datta and Ravinder Singh were fresh, young faces right out of
college. This helped them connect to young India swiftly and easily.
Also, they both represented the changing India that was unafraid
to make bold and unconventional choices whether in terms of a
career or relationships. By encouraging their followers to follow
their passions over a cushy office job at an MNC to finding love
on social media, the younger generation of writers were revered by
their young readers for their confidence and bold choices. They
were the new idols for inspiration and motivation. The publishing
industry at this time started forming new strategies to cater to the
16-25 year old demographic. Penguin’s publishing wing, Metro Reads
started publishing commercial fiction at prices as low as Rs. 100.
As Vaishali Mathur, Commissioning Editor of Metro Reads puts it,
We felt that there was a great need in the market to have books
for the youth. The college students and the working population
find it difficult to read heavy literature and prefer to read books
that they enjoy, storylines that they can relate to and characters
who they can identify with. Penguin Metro Reads publishes what
the reader would enjoy rather than what we as publishers would
like them to read (Rose, 2012).
With popular authors like Durjoy Datta and Ravinder Singh
getting published with Metro Reads, Indian readership recorded
a new milestone as the books were now selling over a thousand
copies within a few days of their publication. The numbers surged
even more with the advent of social media.
 Interrogating Social Media and Romance: The Case of Durjoy Datta 197

With seventeen novels to his credit, Durjoy Datta is a name

that has become synonymous with bestselling novels in the genre
of contemporary romance. A graduate in mechanical engineering,
Datta started writing in college as a hobby and his first book,
Of Course I Love You (2008), co-authored with Manvi Ahuja, was
published by Srishti Publications. He was co-writer for the popular
youth-based television series Sadda Haq (2013-16) for Channel V,
among many others. Featured on innumerable bestselling lists,
Datta has won awards such as the Young Achiever by The Times of
India in 2009 and Crossword Book Award two years in a row in
the category of Popular Choice Award, Fiction, for Our Impossible
Love (2016) and The Boy Who Loved (2017). The young author, in
collaboration with fellow author and friend, Sachin Garg, started
a publishing house, Grapevine India in 2011 for “identifying
young and upcoming talent, backing them and developing them
into strong recognisable brands” (Sharma, 2013). Despite stiff
competition from other writers of Romance such as Ravinder
Singh, Preeti Shenoy, Nikita Singh and others, Datta has managed
to create a niche for himself in Indian fiction. Besides, he also
commands a huge following on social media with a whopping 1.1
million followers on Facebook, one million followers on Twitter
and 368 thousand followers on Instagram, making him one of the
most followed Indian writers in the virtual domain.
It is an undeniable fact that in the post-Chetan Bhagat era there
has been an acceptance of the author in non-literary spheres of
influence as well, adding to the clout of the writer. Considered to be
India’s first star-author, Chetan Bhagat’s profile grew tremendously
as he got involved in ventures other than writing fiction. In 2012,
the author published his first non-fiction book titled What India
Wants, which was a collection of essays on political and social
issues. He later published Making India Awesome (2015) and India
Positive (2019), making him one of the few Indian commercial
authors to successfully foray into the non-fiction genre. He has also
judged a television reality show and endorsed several brands. Very
often in recent times his views have been considered to be either
controversial or even ludicrous, but he has still managed to stay in
the limelight with his social media presence.
198 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

The social media platform has become an essential launch

vehicle for the publishing industry and the commercial fiction
writer as it helps foster a relationship between the author and his
or her prospective readers in strategic ways. The author is expected
to be capable of more than just churning bestsellers. Becoming
a successful, commercial author also involves marketing oneself in
addition to the text written. Young authors are now privileged with
a voice that allows them to speak on a variety of issues other than
fiction, yet, ironically, only a few exercise this right and that too on
rare occasions. Additionally, participation in a multitude of literary
festivals , conferences, book signings and appearances and book
readings before and after the release of the book ensure that the
commercial author is not a voiceless spectre as his or her canonised
counterpart who is lost in the margins due to anonymity, despite
her literary brilliance.
Daman, a character in Datta’s book titled The Girl of My Dreams
(2016) is depicted as an aspiring novelist. He declares, “I should
stitch the posts on my social media accounts, including my blog,
into a coherent story. I already have a readership, so it will help the
book sell when it hits the bookshops” (Datta, 2016). The character
of Daman, much like Durjoy himself, wrote blogs and stories before
getting published and getting recognised as an established author.
Not just for Durjoy, Daman’s words reflect the changing norms of
authorship and popular fiction which is heavily reliant on social
media these days in terms of readership and gaining recognition.
In the book, Daman catches the eyes of the publishers and bags
a book deal because of the popularity of his blogs and Facebook
posts. Nowadays, the strategies adopted to publicise the release
of the book greatly resemble the marketing tactics used by film
production houses, including numerous appearances at various
public platforms or innovative promotional tricks to attract the
audience towards the product.

Writer As Celebrity—The Social Media Effect

From trending with the hashtag #marrymeavantika to the now
famous live session of proposing to his long-time girlfriend
 Interrogating Social Media and Romance: The Case of Durjoy Datta 199

and now wife, Avantika Mohan, debuting new titles, sharing

constructive criticism sent in by the readers, Datta’s use of social
media illustrates the symbiotic relationship between an author and
the readers in the current popular literary setting. Publishing houses
and authors are increasingly involved in connecting to the masses
through various media platforms. To emphasise the ‘popular’ in
the popular/commercial fiction in the current age of technology,
the authors are inviting readers to participate in online contests,
who are further getting invited to live interactive sessions with the
author and play a role in selecting book covers for forthcoming
titles on various social media platforms.
In most of his interviews, Datta has reiterated that it is the
audience alone that has the ability to make a book a bestseller.
Starting out as an engineering student with writing as a hobby,
Datta’s initial success came as a surprise both to the author and the
publishers. The author engaged with his earlier readers on social
media asking them why they preferred his book over others (Nepal
Literature Festival, 2017). This exercise helped him understand
the interests, age-group preferences and the reason why his books
were being read in such great numbers. It also helped him write
his other novels keeping in mind the tastes and the nature of the
audience. With comments like, “He’s so kind! He tries to reply to
every message that is posted on his wall, even though he’s so busy,”
one can see the investment of the author in his readers’ reading
lives (Jhala, 2012). Besides connecting with readers, Datta actively
uses social media to promote not just his own books but also his
contemporaries’ works and those of upcoming authors. Datta says,
“What I do know for sure is that most books work because their
readers talk about it, take it up as their personal mission to make
their friends read it” (Nepal Literature Festival, 2017). One can
often see Datta discussing books and encouraging his followers to
read new books other than his own across his social media.
In India, popular fiction is still a relatively small space
comprising only a few known faces whose books make it to the
bestsellers list. Writers like Chetan Bhagat, Ravinder Singh, Devdutt
Pattanaik and Ashwin Sanghi are read widely because of their writing
200 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

style as well as their admirable following across media. Sometimes,

owing to a lack of followers and social media presence, good writers
are often overlooked and forgotten but there are times when social
media comes to the aid of unknown authors to break through the
literary scene with their talent. With Datta and his contemporaries,
Indian popular fiction has thus evolved into a more democratic
space which encourages author-reader interactions and also allows
space for criticism.
In his book, Star Authors: Literary Celebrity in America (2000),
British literary and social critic Joe Moran observes that the
qualities that the publishers were looking for in upcoming authors
were ‘youth, beauty and white teeth’ (2000, p. 151). Closer home,
the former head of Rupa Publications, Jayanta Kumar Bose
reiterates that appearance does play a role in these (romance,
chick-lit, campus fiction) genres, though it does not define success
(Gupta, 2017). Durjoy Datta’s appeal as a young, dimpled good-
looking author on social media has often been cited as his biggest
advantage in drawing young female readers and also as his biggest
drawback for not being taken seriously. At the launch of one of
his books, the author admitted that, “I don’t mind that my fans
are more attracted to my smile than to my books. As long as they
buy my books, I’m okay” (Jhala, 2012 ). Also, in an interview Datta
confessed, “For a writer to be a real celebrity is the best thing to
happen to the publishing industry. It helps sell books…” In Datta’s
case, his popularity as a fiction writer got him several screenwriting
projects which helped him take up writing full time.

Romance For and By the New Age Man

Urmila Dasgupta, director of Purple Folio, a literary agency in
India says,
Traditionally, there have been women romance writers. But the
male voice is now the exotic novelty. The New Age man is finally
telling his story. The old image of men as emotionless creatures
is dying. The metrosexual man wants to share his emotions.
It’s the coming of age of male writers as well as readers who are
buying them (Banan, 2012).
 Interrogating Social Media and Romance: The Case of Durjoy Datta 201

Traditionally romances have been written for and most often

by women; today, the genre of romance in India boasts of many
young male authors such as Sudeep Nagarkar, Ravinder Singh,
Faraaz Kazi, Novoneel Chakraborty and Datta himself. “Readers
couldn’t believe a man has written this,” or “Could a boy actually
have these feelings? Could a man want anything other than sex?”
says Datta’s contemporary Ravinder Singh on being asked about
men writing romances (Banan, 2012).
Known as the Candace Bushnell (author of the bestselling
series Sex and the City) of Indian fiction (Poonam, 2013), Durjoy
Datta’s romances are love stories of people struggling with life and
relationships. His novels connect to the masses because the stories
reflect the times and their raw emotions and realistic plots make
for a pleasant read. Datta always bases his characters and narratives
on the people around him and his personal and professional
experiences in life. The author started writing during college and
since then his characters have also evolved and matured to suit
the author’s changing sensibilities. Datta started out with writing
romances that were racy, focusing on the lives of teenagers living
in metro cities or young adults. With Datta getting married, his
characters too have grown older and so has the idea of romance in
his novels. The earlier novels, written in collaboration with other
authors, were frivolous reworkings of the boy-meets-girl formula
but the later novels are nuanced and thoughtful pieces bringing
together elements of sexuality, infertility, parenthood, terminal
sickness, professional and societal pressures, etc.
As the narratives changed so did the female and male characters.
Datta’s earlier texts have female characters that were glamourised,
sexy young girls that added the hint of titillation in the story, but
later, the author penned strong-willed, opinionated, uninhibited,
free-thinking, progressive working women who were more than just
pretty girlfriends or wives. Despite the problematic characterisation
of his female protagonists, Datta has enjoyed a strong female
readership since the beginning, with his books receiving positive
reviews from young girls. The female readers find his romances
thrilling, riveting and sentimental, much like reading a Bollywood
202 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

script, a compliment often received by the author. In The Girl of

My Dreams, the protagonist Daman, who is an upcoming author,
is at loggerheads with Jayanti, his editor, over the characterisation
of the female lead Shreyasi in his novel. According to Daman,
the character of Shreyasi which he had originally written was a
“real” woman, “a Mathematics major, a gold medallist no less,
working with a start-up that made algorithms for search engines…”
but ironically, Jayanti edited Daman’s character for a “spineless,
stereotypical, weak damsel in distress…” who would appeal to the
masses (Datta, 2016). Moreover, to pursue his dreams of becoming
an author, Daman, the male character quits his job and leans on his
girlfriend Avni for financial and emotional support as his family is
opposed to his passion for writing.
The new age Indian romance writers have chosen to replace
the tropes of the-knight-in-shining-armour and the damsel-in­
distress with real characters that are independent, career-oriented
professionals juggling Indian traditions with modernity. Celebrated
romance writer Nikita Singh observes that the English-educated
millennials, who have rejected Indian television for Hollywood
and American TV series, are looking towards new content in
Indian fiction, especially romance, as it continues to overpower
all other genres (including films) in popular culture (Singh, 2018).
Moreover, Datta and Novoneel Chakraborty have reinvented the
genre of romance by successfully delivering romantic thrillers such
as The Stranger Trilogy (2016), which is soon to be adapted as a web
series, and The Girl of My Dreams (2016).

The ‘Real’ in Durjoy Datta’s Romance Fiction

Romance fiction has traditionally been dismissed as being women’s
fantasy, unreal and escapist. Ironically, Durjoy Datta’s books have
a fan base not just among boys but also girls for being real. As
a representative of the present-day generation, Datta believes that
romances written from the perspective of a boy should be more
than just about sex. His novels often portray the male protagonist
as emotionally dependent and/or earning less than his female
counterpart and is also seen discussing problems relating to
 Interrogating Social Media and Romance: The Case of Durjoy Datta 203

parenthood and family—issues which are often glossed over for

being feminine.
The major influence for Datta’s characters, their names and
their stories is his own life with his partner, Avantika Mohan, a
model, social media influencer and an air hostess. The author has
admitted repeatedly that it is because of Avantika that most of his
female characters have names starting with the alphabet ‘A’. Also,
half of his books have the characters named Avantika and Deb
(short for Debashish) which can be seen as the author’s surrogate.
In Datta’s novels, characters named Avantika are often beautiful,
smart, incredibly attractive, professional women managing their
personal and professional lives with equal ease, whereas on the other
hand Deb is an awkward, easy-going young man raised in a Bengali
family with a distant father and an overly affectionate mother, who
is utterly and madly in love with Avantika. Moreover, the repeated
naming of characters as Avantika and Deb have struck a chord in
the hearts of the audiences (especially female readers), as the novels
are read as an insight into the author’s real-life relationship with
wife Avantika.
Datta’s own journey as a writer reflects the career paths and
dilemmas of the generation he is a part of. Unsure about the
writing process and a career of a writer, he started writing novels
in collaborations with other novelists such as Nikita Singh,
Maanvi Ahuja, Neeti Rustagi and Orvana Ghai. Datta grabbed the
attention of his readers with catchy titles and characters in multiple
relationships falling in and out of love—Of Course I Love You..!...
Till I Find Someone Better (2008); Now That You’re Rich! Let’s Fall in
Love! (2009); SHE BROKE UP I DIDN’T! ... I Just Kissed Someone
Else! (2010); Ohh Yes, I’m Single..! And So is My Girlfriend! (2010); You
Were My Crush! ... till you said you love me!; (2011) If It’s Not Forever
... It’s Not Love (2012). Datta’s books are written in the first person
or an epistolary form, with easy flowing, lucid and simple English.
His early romances deal with generational issues of love. With the
lives of protagonists revolving around falling in love, getting a job,
sex, intimacy and breakups, Datta illustrates the fickle nature of the
millennials and their attitude towards love.
204 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

After many successful collaborations, Datta came into his own

with Hold My Hand (2013), When Only Love Remains (2014), World’s
Best Boyfriend (2015), Our Impossible Love (2016), The Girl of My
Dreams (2016), The Boy Who Loved (2017), The Boy with A Broken
Heart (2017) and The Perfect Us (2018). Moving away from frivolous
notions of love, multiple partners, confused relationships, Datta
started focusing on characters who were independent, modern
yet traditional, believing in the concept of everlasting love. He
also introduced new and mature themes such as long-distance
relationships, family drama, marriages, disabilities/diseases, inter­
religious differences, homosexuality, etc.
Hold My Hand (2013) is an endearing tale of a boy falling
in love with a blind girl. Ahana and Deb are two teenagers who
meet and fall in love while exploring the glitzy city of Hong Kong.
Ahana is a beautiful, strong-willed girl who had lost her eyesight
at the tender age of five. Born to a beautiful Muslim mother and a
handsome Indian pilot, she has been living a life hopping between
cities for her medical treatments. From Paris, US, Singapore to
Hong Kong, Ahana is a well-travelled, cosmopolitan girl who is
unafraid to explore the city on her own or with the boy she is
falling for. At times, Datta’s narrative makes the reader forget that
Ahana is, in fact, visually challenged. Though not as interesting
and noteworthy as his other texts, World’s Best Boyfriend (2015) is
a college romance between Dhruv and Aranya where the latter is
suffering from a skin disease that makes her a social pariah. A
typical romance with the love-hate-love formula, Datta once again
brings to the fore the power of love. In both Hold My Hand and
World’s Best Boyfriend, Datta’s writing invisibilises the disability or
the disease of the female character by focusing on her intelligence,
passion and the love she shares with the male protagonist.
The Perfect Us (2018) is the story of Avantika and Deb who
are struggling with the pressure of having a baby and a successful
relationship. Datta weaves together a love story that is a tale of
many contemporary couples who are struggling to make choices
in a world full of social, economic and personal obstacles. It also
thoughtfully discusses themes such as parenthood, infertility and
 Interrogating Social Media and Romance: The Case of Durjoy Datta 205

difficult pregnancy which are often avoided and shunned as too

sensitive for commercial fiction. Avantika’s character is that of a
smart and attractive investment banker who has had a rough past
due to which she is troubled with infertility issues. The book, like
many others of the author, rebuilds on the value of love above all
the struggles of life. It is a contemporary and original interpretation
of modern urban couples and their relationships.

Conclusion
Datta’s demographic are young adults who are negotiating with
the new realities and issues arising in the post-global socio-cultural
scenario in the Indian context. The genre of contemporary romance
has given the Indian authors a chance to rewrite life, love and
relationships with its complex interweaving of personal ambition
and desire with the demands of the new millennium. It has given
birth to new-age writers, writing techniques and various forms of
narrating stories that did not seem possible before. Datta and his
contemporaries are slowly and steadily changing Indian commercial
fiction. By bringing together social media and storytelling, the
fictional space has become an expansive and inclusive sphere
for sharing narratives. Datta’s first book itself emerged out of a
compilation of his blog-posts. Popular applications like Instagram
and Twitter are becoming acceptable spaces of literary exchanges.
With pages like TTT, The Scribbled Stories, Half-Baked Beans, a new
sphere of publishing has emerged which is democratic, prompt and
based primarily on the audience-author relationship. Social media
has thus emerged as an integral yet curious patron of literature and
writers like Durjoy Datta are paving the way for harnessing this
medium to the writers’ advantage.

References
Banan, A. (2012, April 21). The lovey-dovey boys. OPEN. https://
openthemagazine.com/lounge/books/the-lovey-dovey-boys/
Gupta, K. (2017, February 1). ‘We find our writers through unsolicited
submissions. We read every manuscript’: Jayanta Kumar Bose. Scroll.
206 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

https://scroll.in/article/829091/we-find-our-writers-through­
unsolicited-submissions-we-read-every-manuscript-jayanta­
kumar-bose
Datta, Durjoy. (2010). She broke up, I didn’t!: I just kissed someone else!
Penguin India.
Datta, Datta. (2011). You were my crush: Till you said you love me!
Penguin Metro Reads.
Datta, Durjoy. (2013). Till the last breath. Penguin India.
Datta, Durjoy.( 2013). Hold my hand. Penguin Metro Reads.
Datta, Durjoy. (2015). The world’s best boyfriend. Penguin Random
House India.
Datta, Durjoy. (2015). When only love remains. Penguin Books Limited.
Datta, Durjoy.( 2016). The girl of my dreams. Penguin Random House
India.
Datta, Durjoy. (2016). Our impossible love. Penguin Random House
India.
Datta, Durjoy. (2017). The boy who loved. Penguin Random House
India.
Datta, Durjoy. (2017). The boy with a broken heart. Penguin Metro
Reads.
Datta, Durjoy. (2018). The perfect us. Penguin Metro Reads.
Datta, D. and Singh, N. (2013). Someone like you. Penguin India.
Datta, D. and Ahuja, M. (2018). Now that you’re rich let’s fall in love!.
Penguin Random House India.
Datta, D. and Ahuja, M. (2008). Of course I love you!. Grapevine India
Publishers.
Datta, D. and Singh, N. (2012). If it’s not forever. Grapevine India
Publishers.
India Today. (2019, November 3).What makes a novel tick? | In conversation
with Durjoy Datta & Ravinder Singh | #SahityaAajtak19.[Video
file] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-NxacVrceQ
Jhala, G. (2012, March 25). Portrait of the author as a cute guy. DNA
India. https://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report-portrait-of-the­
author-as-a-cute-guy-1666998
Kumar, M. (2010, September 5). Good news story?. The Times of India.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/deep­
focus/Good-news-story/articleshow/6494294.cms
 Interrogating Social Media and Romance: The Case of Durjoy Datta 207

Moran, J. (2000). Star authors: Literary celebrity in America. Pluto Press.

Nepal Literature Festival. (2017, January 27). The making of a
bestseller: Hima Bista in conversation with Durjoy Datta. https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOCkjE2odR8
Poonam, S. (2013, March 11). Love in the time of Durjoy Datta. India
Ink. https://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/love-in-the­
time-of-durjoy-datta/
Singh, D. (2018, April 8). Indian authors writing in English are giving
the romance genre their own relatable twist. DNA. https://www.
dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report-indian-authors-writing-in-english­
are-giving-the-romance-genre-their-own-relatable-twist-2600070
Rose, J.B. (2016, July 1). Easy urban reads. The Hindu. https://www.
thehindu.com/books/easy-urban-reads/article3844086.ece
Sharma, M. (2013, February 24). New-age authors cash in on growing
market. Hindustan Times. https://www.hindustantimes.com/
india/new-age-authors-cash-in-on-growing-market/story­
gtUcjtA6FHuwn7Si6zodUP.html
 11
India’s Tryst With Flash Fiction:
A Terribly Tiny Tale
Rachit Raj and Pranjali Gupta

For sale, baby shoes, never worn…

This six-word micro tale, famously and anecdotally ascribed to

the American writer Ernest Hemingway (Batchelor, 2012, p. 78)
may or may not have been written by that great writer (Mikkelson,
2008), but it certainly encapsulates the essence of micro-fiction
or flash fiction. While flash fiction as an idea—a story or poem
written in minimal words—has been present in literature for a
long time, its proliferation and success in the 21st century, riding
on the back of technology is noteworthy. The turn of the new
millennium has seen a quantum leap in information technologies
that continue to define and redefine the digital era. With a highly
advanced, internet-connected gadget in the form of a cell phone
accessible at all times, one is constantly bombarded with texts,
Instagram, Facebook and twitter notifications. As attention spans
get shorter and shorter (Batchelor, 2012) it has changed the way
people communicate with each other and in forms of literature
as well. In the current social-media driven world, humans’ thirst
for power and money has amplified, leaving them with far less
time to spend on leisure and other pleasures, including literature.
Gauging the temperature of the times, literature has transformed
itself into a structure that has found a tiny corner in the little
 India’s Tryst With Flash Fiction: A Terribly Tiny Tale 209

tight space left idle in the timeline of the average human being.
Flash fiction is concise and shorter than the kind of literature
produced earlier and can be consumed by millennials on the go.
The internet, including online platforms, blogs, social media, is
home to flash fiction where each piece is preferably not more than
a hundred words and as small as a mere six words, following in the
footsteps of Hemingway’s micro tale.
In the world of long working hours and Kindle, flash fiction
has emerged as an easier form of literature to read. It provides the
sensory and emotional pleasure that one looks for in a reading
experience. These narratives lack the socio-political depth that
one finds in longer texts like Crime and Punishment or Moby Dick.
But the audience of these texts is not looking for a character who
questioned the morality of killing someone or went to great lengths
to kill a large whale, to begin with. In a world where fiction has
become a means of entertainment more than introspection, the
themes that are touched in flash fiction are rooted in the simple
emotions that the readers can connect with without delving deeply
into the complexities of the thematic emotion of the text. It allows
the reader to immerse themselves in literature without making the
commitment of reading a novel.

Understanding Flash Fiction

Flash fiction, also at times referred to as micro fiction, cannot be
defined easily as one can find flash fiction in every era since the
beginning of literature in different forms and styles—its origins
lying in the short narrative format, including the short story, fable
or even parable. Estimatedly, anything that is written under 1000
words can be considered flash fiction, but this does not define the
genre in its true sense. Various adjuncts such as ultra-short, micro,
sudden, postcard, furious fast, quick, skinny, minute, etc. are used to
convey the shortness of this kind of fiction (Gurley, 2000). Referring
to his own collection of flash fiction, Sawn-off Tales, David Gaffney
terms them as stories that take “less time to read than to suppress
a sneeze” (2012). The particular success of flash fiction with young
people can certainly be attributed to the miniature nature of this
210 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

kind of fiction which does not demand too much time to process
in the present-day fast-paced world. For Batchelor, the fascination
for flash fiction as well as fan fiction in the digital age is “directly
tied to the desire for brevity and instant gratification” (2012, p. 78).
But at the same time, regardless of technology, people still turn to
words to express their understanding of human life, and despite
the popularity of video channels such as YouTube, the web is still
dominated by text and reading (p. 79).
Despite the shortness of its format, each work of flash fiction
offers a complete narrative with a beginning, middle and an end
(Gurley, 2000), along with a basic setting, a minimal plot and at
least one character. A complex interplay of characters and a plot
development cannot be expected in flash fiction. Since there is no
time to set scenes or build characters, the best flash fiction begins in
the middle and doesn’t have an ending at the end (Gaffney, 2012).
Similarly, according to Batchelor (2012), there are three key points
in writing flash fiction: an opening in the middle of the action,
swirling it with crisis and implied resolution (p. 79). According to
Sharqi and Abbasi, flash fiction is a “hybrid or mixed genre that
consists of one part poetry and one part narrative” (2015, p. 56). A
work of flash fiction, in essence, is like ripping off the bandage in
one go. A novel has layers and a plot that unveils certain things at
certain times that is well thought and calculated. But flash fiction
bares everything all at once. However, this is not to say that flash
fiction cannot live in the minds of its readers. The best flash fiction
includes stories that haunt readers for days and weeks even though
it took them only a few minutes to read (Al-Sharqi & Abbasi,
2015, p. 58) and move the reader intellectually and emotionally
(Batchelor, 2012, p. 79). The popularity of flash fiction in the
digital age is not just on account of its form, but also in its ability
to convey the human condition with brevity and thoughtfulness.
In the second decade of the 21st century, flash fiction has acquired
a special significance since it marks a new stage in the evolution
of the narrative form and has become “one of the primary sites
for experimentation with story and language” (Kerr in Gethins &
Dastur, 2016).
 India’s Tryst With Flash Fiction: A Terribly Tiny Tale 211

The Rise of Flash Fiction

The American writer Diane Williams is commonly hailed as the
Godmother of flash fiction (Bradley, 2018), her work spanning
from her first publication in 1990 to her collection named The
Collected Short Stories of Diane Williams in 2018. Most of her own
stories are one to two pages long, some of them consisting of
just a few sentences. Her literary annual, Noon, founded in 2000
is considered as a pioneering presence in the recent evolution of
flash fiction. However, though the very short fiction format has
been around for many decades, it has only been around the year
2010 that flash fiction came to be recognised as a distinct evolving
sub-genre (Kerr in Gethins & Dastur, 2016). This can also be
connected to the widespread and evolving convergence of digital
technologies and social media platforms at this point in the new
millennium. While Facebook was launched in 2004 and Twitter
in 2006, Instagram was launched in 2010. Technology helps in
bypassing roadblocks created by the traditional publishing world
(Batchelor, 2012) and writers found an accessible audience eager
to lap up a new evolving literary style which could marry creative
expression with technology. As part of growing recognition
for flash fiction, National Flash Fiction Day (NFFD) is being
celebrated annually in the United Kingdom since 2012 following
the efforts of the writer Calum Kerr who is responsible for
bringing the genre to a wider, more receptive plain as a form of
writing. Several online publishing sites, dedicated exclusively to
flash fiction have sprung up since then. The New Yorker, Flash
Fiction Online and many others have assisted the genre in its
evolution, encouraging its readers to become writers as well, by
inviting submissions or holding writing contests. For the young,
writing flash fiction is an enjoyable way of stimulating creativity
and challenging their storytelling abilities without making too
much demand upon their time. Several online platforms such as
Flash Fiction Online, Everyday Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, The
Funny Times and American Short Fiction also offer payment for
contributions (Bruce, 2019).
212 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Terribly Tiny Tales—Flash Fiction in the Indian Popular

Space
Although the world wide web transcends geographical boundaries,
it has the power to blend regional cultural and literary aspirations
with global trends. In India, the online site/publication Terribly
Tiny Tales (TTT) was launched in 2013 by Anuj Gosalia (joined
later by Chintan Ruparel) and it pioneered the wave of flash fiction
in the country with stories under 140 characters, and often soaked
in intense emotion, a concept alien to most at that time. Gosalia,
a young management graduate from Mumbai, had the vision to
provide a space for aspiring writers to share their works with a
larger audience. He had begun an advertising agency known by
the name Not Like That, which became the base from where
Terribly Tiny Tales came into being. It emerged out of his posts on
a Facebook page and the desire to create better content on social
media (Sivaram, 2015). He conceptualised the platform with stories
within 140 characters(including spaces) put inside boxes with
black background and white lettering so as to make it visually eye-
catching and quick to read. According to Gosalia,
Terribly Tiny Tales borrowed from the brevity of Twitter, the
impact of flash fiction and the social web’s opportunity to easily
collaborate. Also, the packaging of the tale into an image made
it visually attractive and easy to consume (Sivaram, 2015).
What started as a Facebook page soon moved to its own
website and expanded its social media footprint with Instagram
and Twitter with audience engagement in the form of liking and
commenting. Spotting the potential, the team at TTT also created
an app and opened up the platform for audience contributions.
They created a URL through which the community could send in
their submissions, which the team curated and published. Today, it
has a following of over 3 million across all social media. This has
given TTT a huge fillip as a business enterprise with several brand
collaborators coming on board and paying good money to run
subtle promotional campaigns on the platform across social media
(Venugopalan, 2018).
 India’s Tryst With Flash Fiction: A Terribly Tiny Tale 213

Terribly Tiny Tales started with a team of twelve writers and

sought to make the platform a breath of fresh air in the space
of digital fiction writing, aiming to provide opportunities to new
ideas and relatable themes that could find their way away from
the longer form of narrative. This gave Terribly Tiny Tales early
success, paving the way for it to become a pioneering name in the
growing popularity of flash fiction in India. Its mass appeal for
the young and restless lies not just in its “snackable” format, but
also in the emotion that is put out in its narrative. Even in the case
of collaboration with companies, the campaigns are run as stories
with focus on the emotion. According to Gosalia,
With a constantly reducing attention span online, micro-fiction
is something that rewards you disproportionately for your
time. You take maybe 10 seconds reading a tale but it will leave
you with a minute of emotion; and maybe if it’s really good, a
thought that will stay with you for a whole day. The fact that
we have created a platform where you can write beautifully and
both the platform and the writer can earn money, is empowering
(Mantri, 2016).
TTT provides a platform for the voices of diverse writers
penning hard-hitting stories that they might find difficult to
publish elsewhere; themes including “the deafening silence of
unrequited love, muffled screams of loss, chaos of the heart,
resounding voice of women trapped in the ideals of society, the
battles within ourselves, the gentle warmth of love, the taste of
freedom and everything in between and beyond” (Amin, 2018).
The literature that has blossomed under Terribly Tiny Tales caught
snaps of moments and emotions that were both relatable and
unique for the readers. A quick glance at the kind of work that the
platform opened the doors for is a good way to understand how
it brought a wider interest in literature on a social media platform
that was only now reaching its potential:
I was lost & tired,
looking for a way out,
214 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Found you.

Who knew people could be maps, too?

This poem by Alena Jamal is an apt example of the kind of
work produced by Terribly Tiny Tales. The tone and language used
by Jamal is simple, and the theme has clarity. It also has a distinct
beginning, middle and end to it (Gurley, 2000) and is a fine example
of how within a very short word-limit flash fiction manages to
achieve the structure and coherence of a complete narrative.
Here, it would be noteworthy to look at another example of a
work on Terribly Tiny Tales:
“You are the worst brother in the whole world”

“Should I go away?”

“Never”
This conversational flash fiction by Sakat, once again, follows
a complete structure of a literary work. It establishes a relationship,
and a history between the two characters. Like the previous poem,
this one also tells a complete story, not leaving anything hanging
in the air. The writing is crisp, but sharp. It is to the point, and
conveys exactly what it wants the reader to feel. This micro-tale is
another wonderful example of how flash fiction produced under
Terribly Tiny Tales is increasingly sharp and astute both as an
entertaining read and a work of art.
In the wake of its immense success, TTT has also diversified
to the video platform with Terribly Tiny Talkies. However, videos
take longer to shoot and prepare while words are easier and faster
to upload. Recognising the power of the print format, TTT has
also brought out its collections in two volumes in the book form
with Penguin Random House; Terribly Tiny Tales (Vol. 1, 2017) and
Ninety Seven Poems (2018). Introducing their work in Vol. 1, Gosalia
and Ruparel write: “We believe the best stories aren’t just the ones
that move you while reading. They’re the ones that stay...We only
believe in the magic of storytelling, and know that each writer has
 India’s Tryst With Flash Fiction: A Terribly Tiny Tale 215

put a lot of heart and craft into what these pages hold” (2017). The
focus of Terribly Tiny Tales on theme, emotion and craft clearly
makes a case for their flash fiction to be considered as a dynamic
and evolving literary art in the space of the Indian popular.
The success of Terribly Tiny Tales has paved the way for many
other micro-fiction platforms in India. Recognising the immense
potential of this space as a business model where love for creativity
and literature can also be monetised, enterprising youngsters have
been quick to jump onto the bandwagon. Instagram has several
such pages based on the formula of user submission and curation.
Some of these are—The Scribbled Stories (TSS), Scratched Stories,
Scrawled Stories, Little Letters Linked, TalesXpress, Washroom
Stories, and the majority of their audience are millennials between
the ages 18 and 24 (Venugopalan, 2018). However, none of these
have been as successful commercially as TTT.

Milk and Honey: Rupi Kaur’s Contribution to Flash Fiction

Belonging to a family of Indian immigrants to Canada, Rupi Kaur
has drawn considerable attention in India as well with her short
fiction and revolutionary expression. Her visual poetry put up on
Instagram and Tumblr shot her to global fame even as she was
graduating through college. Her work is also remarkable for the
manner in which she explores the themes of relationships, the
immigrant experience and sexual trauma. Kaur’s Milk and Honey
(2014) has been one of the most fascinating examples of how
popular flash fiction is becoming a major literary force globally
and how flash fiction is developing as a central form of fiction
writing. Rupi Kaur owes her success to flash fiction as it helped her
raise herself from being a rookie to the #1 New York Times bestseller
in a very short time.
Milk and Honey gained international fame as Kaur touched
a chord with the people. Reading excerpts from Kaur’s book
immerses a reader in emotions in the same way as one is immersed
while reading a full novel. Though Kaur doesn’t identify her work
as flash fiction, all her work is synonymous with flash fiction. Her
poems are short, complete in themselves as an entity and provide
216 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

the readers with an enriching experience that has ensured a lasting

presence of her poems in the minds of her readers.
A collection of prose and poetry, Milk and Honey is divided in
four parts. Each piece of writing has a universal appeal, finding a
connection especially with the youth, thus weaving an invisible link
between the reader and the writer. Her poems talk of taboo topics
like menstruation and rape in graphic terms. She picks obscure
topics and constructs her poetry with simple language and relatable
analogies, making them a comfortable read for a wider number of
readers. True to its genre, Milk and Honey is hard hitting and, in
a few words, not only catches the attention of the reader but also
pokes and pinches the reader in all the right areas and takes them
on an unusual trip.
Here, it might be worth looking at some of the most popular
poems from this collection to understand the texture that Kaur uses
to ensure that her work finds popularity amongst the young mass.

i am water

soft enough to offer life

tough enough
to drown it away.

As visible in this poem, Kaur extracts complex themes in her

work, conveying ideas of intrinsic complexities in a few lines. Her
vocabulary, grammar and expression are easy to follow, making it
easier for her to convey complex ideas.
Another example of her work shows us how Kaur maintains
an association with the larger theme of love that helps her find a
readership in the youth of her times.

don’t mistake
salt for sugar
if he wants to
be with you
 India’s Tryst With Flash Fiction: A Terribly Tiny Tale 217

he will
it’s that simple.
Here, Kaur takes the simple theme of being loved by the man
who you are in love with. Once again, a clarity in her tone and the
simplistic vocabulary helps her in achieving a resonance with her
readership, expressing the complex truth of wanting to be with the
person you love, easily and holistically.
The popularity and prominence of Milk and Honey brings
flash fiction to the centre stage of contemporary literature and it
has become a beacon of light for writers who like to experiment
with their writings. Kaur followed it up with her next work, The
Sun and Her Flowers (2017), which helped in cementing the genre
of ‘Instapoetry’. While digital platforms provide an opportunity
to a wide number of aspiring poets to write flash fiction, the
success of books like this creates conditions for the acceptance and
legitimisation of flash fiction as the next most popular form in the
genre of fiction writing, driving world literature beyond the age of
long novels and complex poetry. The popularity and reception of
Kaur’s latest work ‘Home Body’ (2020) bears testimony to this fact.

Mirakee : Taking Writing to Android

Another significant milestone when talking about flash fiction in
India is Mirakee. It is a writing mobile application which serves as a
platform for flash fiction writers. Launched in 2016 by two 25-year­
olds, Akshay Chhikara and Alankrita Sood, Mirakee has become
a global platform for writers who love to express their emotions
in just a few words. This application allows writers to embellish
their writing in an image form. Mirakee acts like a catalyst as
it is not only a place where one can write but it also serves as a
community where writers can share their writings on other social
media platform as well.
In a matter of only three years, Mirakee has developed a huge
writer base. With its in-built designing technique to make every
piece of writing more eye-catching, writers can create artistic posts
to put forward and share their thoughts with the world. Sharing her
218 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

vision for the application, Alankrita Sood calls it an amalgamation

of her technical knowledge and artistic inclinations (Nair, 2018).
As a pioneering phone application Mirakee allows a writer to
write not only in English but also in Hindi, Urdu and many other
European languages such as Spanish and French. Apart from a core
subscriber base in India, Mirakee also hosts writers from across
the world; from Europe, USA, UK, Malaysia and the Philippines.
Termed as a writer’s paradise, Mirakee allows a writer to copyright
and sign their original work. It has a strong policy against plagiarism
and thus all the works on this platform are original. With a daily
event where a post of the day is chosen and shared, this platform
keeps the writers on their toes and encourages them to be at their
creative best.

Conclusion
The galloping success of the flash fiction platforms in India reveals
the immense potential of the form. India today has the largest
youth population in the world which is also aspirational and quick
to learn and experiment. Keeping this in mind, Terribly Tiny Tales
and others continuously hold events, tutorials and workshops to
train budding writers in this form of literature. While on one hand
it sustains the subscriber base for these platforms, the collaborations
that they offer between college campuses and huge brands attract
young writers to the glamour, instant fame and opportunities
associated with this new form. With the help of spaces like Terribly
Tiny Tales and Mirakee, India has made a name for itself as the
literary circuit that is making momentous contributions in making
flash fiction a powerhouse in the realm of literature. As the world
moves into the third decade of the 21st century, literature is taking
a new shape, moulding itself in accordance with the demands of the
time. Flash fiction is the perfect form of literature for a generation
that is susceptible to getting bored easily. It demands less from its
readers and provides them with the wealthy experience of being
introduced to poetry as well. Flash fiction is on a continuous rise
and is staring us in the face wherever one goes. An advertisement
on the bus also falls under the pigeonhole of flash fiction. Micro or
 India’s Tryst With Flash Fiction: A Terribly Tiny Tale 219

flash fiction is an inevitable reality of the postmodern world where

everyone is looking for memorable phrases to catch the attention
of the onlooker.
While there are sections of staunch literary critics who have
frowned upon the idea of flash fiction emerging as a major form,
it is essential to understand that in the growth of flash fiction as
literature, there is a larger hope for poetry as a form catering to an
audience that is probably not equipped to understand the depth
of My Last Duchess and the power of nostalgia that Wordsworth’s
Tintern Abbey carries with itself. Everyone is not endowed to
understand the complexity of Edgar Allan Poe’s veiled expression
in The Raven and it is here that flash fiction comes to their aid.
Flash fiction cuts to the chase and provides a thrill which is quick,
hard-hitting and easier to follow. Thanks to the multiple flash
fiction platforms, India has emerged as an important player in the
future of flash fiction. As we move towards a digital world, we
stand at an exciting juncture in the story of world literature—with
multitudes of possibilities that could open up popular fiction for
masses in ways that was unheard of, a few decades ago.

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com/article/rise-indian-micro-fiction-young-writers-trying-make­
money-tweet-sized-tales-46194
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shoes/
Nair, S. (2018) Short-form writing platform mirakee marries modern tech
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form-writing-platform-mirakee-marries-modern-tech-literature
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Williams, D. (2019). The collected stories of Diane Williams. Soho Press.
 12
Online Writer and the New Age Popular
Prachi Sharma

It is vain for a sober man to knock at Poesy’s door

— Plato, The Republic

Many centuries ago, when Plato envisaged his ideal republic, he

exiled poets from it. According to him they lacked rationality and
did not comprehend what they preached. Filling people’s heads
with nonsense, they were the models of unfaithfulness and were not
to be confided in. Centuries later, in the present age of internet,
blogs, and web publishing, this seems to be coming true. Poetry
publishing has become a tricky business. Most often it does not
sell, and when it does, it gets lost in the vast firmament of art
and imagination. On the other hand, self-help, new-age romance
and crime stories enjoy large readership constituencies. With the
gatekeeping approach of the publishing industry, getting one’s
work to the masses has become more challenging than ever; it is
the nectar that not everyone gets to savour. In such a hostile milieu,
the struggle for a writer to find a home for their work, a place with
the widest readership base and impact that presents a chance for
building a community of like-minded people and exploring the
vistas of the art of writing remains bleak.
With the advent of the 21st century, the internet has become
home to these homeless. Writers have bypassed the traditions of
 Online Writer and the New Age Popular 223

the paper and print industry and begun to explore a platform that
has space for all: that of the web, an inexhaustible ever-welcoming
space. All the so-called ‘infamous misfits’ find their abode on the
internet. Remarkably, with the digital revolution and advances in
the field of technology, social media and web space have become
more than just the places to find old lost friends and share
moments from one’s life. Sven Birkerts, the editor of Agni Online
has noted, “I guess what the authors have to do is make the work
stick not just to the pages but to the reader’s eye—an eye that is
now used to flickering rapidly over cyberspace” (Beasley, 2009).
In this new age of e-commerce, an individual is dependent on the
internet like a spoiled brat on his mother, calling her for every need
while lounging on a comfortable sofa. This makes a very fertile
soil for the fruits of creativity to sprout. Therefore, today we see
not just the poets that form the majority of these online writers
but also the writers of fictional series, editorials, eBooks, blogs
including copywriters and content writers, , finding their audience
on abundant platforms. Most often, there is a fair amount of lucre
also in this transaction. Once the domain of the literary elite and
literature pundits, it is now free for all.
The resistance arises from those who are accustomed to a
certain canon and the idea of ‘real literature’. Popular Literature,
time and again, is looked down upon as ‘low’ by such purists.
For them, the expansion of ‘real literature’ to the internet is a
nightmare which has come true. Online writers are labelled as
‘misfits’ whose work didn’t make it to print, their reader base is
accused of being that of the virtual world existing over pixelated
screens, their language is judged as inferior, their art is considered
‘unreal’. As a matter of fact, positioning social media and literature
opposed to each other with some kind of a friction between them
is to not fully fathom the significance of this burgeoning space
occupied by literature. In his essay Decolonising the Mind, Ngugi
wa Thiong’o refers to language as having a dual character; it is
both “the means of communication” and “the carrier of culture”
(1986, p. 1). If literature, in both its style and subject is, after all,
the reflection of culture and the society in which the author and
224 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

the reader live, then popular literature is real literature and it is

time we grant it the place it deserves.
One of the defining facts that is reshaping the society and
culture of today as we know it, is the accessibility of the internet for
people around the world. By 2021, the number of worldwide social
network users is expected to reach some 3.02 billion monthly active
users and approximately a third of a billion are expected to be from
India alone (Clement, 2020). With Facebook being the top leader
in this market, there are other fast emerging sites like Pinterest,
Instagram and the microblogging platform Tumblr. With that sort
of high engagement on the web space, it is natural that people are
more often preferring electronic media over print. They have busy
lives and the majority of the reading population is not interested
in decoding complex metaphors and writing styles. Brevity is the
new ‘classic’. The tremendous popularity and success of Terribly
Tiny Tales (TTT) and the phenomenally growing fashion of micro
poetry are testimonies to that. Readers are looking for content
that is relatable and rings a bell. If upon reading the first few
lines, their heads don’t nod in agreement, the writer is probably
not serving the right purpose. Gatekeeping the arena of writing is
equivalent to gatekeeping the arena of reading. Limiting literature
to predetermined styles and granting the right of its creation to a
few ‘eligible’ writers is to also limit its readership to a few who are
‘eligible’ to make sense of its intricacies. The democratisation of
literature by putting it on an online platform, giving the writers a
chance to reach their audience is to assist it in fulfilling its purpose
because literature itself is media, a tool for communication and
more often than not, it is reliant upon interaction with other
human beings. Literature is social.
There is also strong evidence of the fact that social media is
in fact increasing creativity in students. A study conducted by The
National Literacy Trust of United States showed that out of 3,001
students surveyed 57 per cent who actively blog or are on social
media enjoy writing and are confident of it more than the others
(Harris & Dilts, 2015). There are platforms like Watt Pad, Word
Press, Writer’s Digest and a number of groups on Facebook which
 Online Writer and the New Age Popular 225

cater to the needs of different kinds of writers and give them an

opportunity to engage with each other in a meaningful process of
polishing their skills.
However, certain studies have found that online writing comes
with many liberties taken by amateur writers. The Internet doesn’t
encourage proper grammar usage. Mickie Harris and Nicole Marie
Dilts in their study talk about how Twitter, for example, “only lets
people post tweets of 140 characters which doesn’t always allow for
complete sentences, and usually results in run-ons and fragments”
(2015). This also leads to incorporation of the internet slang,
use of abbreviations to keep the text short, skipping apostrophe,
common spelling errors, problems with capitalisation, reliance on
autocorrect and so on. Harris and Dilts also point out another
issue of formality, “People were not using complete sentences and
were using a shorthand approach in their formal writings”. Their
tone was “casual” which makes it unacceptable for academic and
professional writing. This is one of the major challenges for students
who intend to become writers. This means that the aforementioned
liberties when taken online do not call for attention because that
is the language of the internet. However, incorporating that slang
into professional work is problematic and that calls to be resolved
by teaching students the process and technicalities of academic
writing rather than penalising the whole ‘online world’ of writers.
Another point which needs to be brought to attention is that
these liberties in language are taken by the ‘people’ on the internet
and not necessarily the ‘writers’. Renowned writers and poets take
utmost care of these details in the write ups that they post and one
finds their language to be as appropriate and well-groomed as that
of the writers in print. However, that might not be the case when
they have dialogues or conversations on social media. To acquire
the proficiency to use different kinds of language on different
occasions is the challenge at hand.
Akhil Katyal, for example, has published academic books
including This Unsettling Place: Readings in American Literature: A
Critical Anthology (Katyal & Dasgupta, 2014) and he is also an active
poet online. The two forms of him are completely different colours,
226 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

both very vibrant. Following is his subtle take on the caste system,
a piece of ‘micropoetry’ that he shared on his public Instagram
profile:
One day, when he was
about ten or twelve,
he asked his mother
“What is my caste?
Some boys in the
school were asking.
I didn’t know what
to say.” The mother,
got up in the middle
of her supper, “Beta,
if you don’t know it by
now, it must be upper.”
(Katyal, 2018, @katyal.akhil on Instagram)
Social media, Katyal says, allows him to take liberties, be
irreverent, and switch linguistic registers as he wishes (Ghoshal,
2018). That is the very nature of online writing and it successfully
caters to the expectations of the readers.
The existence of this constant disapproval of the language used
by modern writers is contradictory to the very essence of it being
‘alive’. “English has always evolved—that is what means to be a living
language—and now the internet plays a pivotal role in driving this
evolution” (Favilla, 2017). The question is what is the change that
everyone is talking about? Is that a change worth all this attention
or is that simply a change that accompanies the change in culture
and in people’s lifestyles? David Crystal, author of the book called
Internet Linguistics says, “The vast majority of English is exactly the
same today as it was 20 years ago” (Favilla, 2017). And his research
indicated that even e-communication isn’t too different, “90 per
cent or so of the language you use in a text is standard English,
or at least your local dialect”. What in fact has changed is the
way we communicate, not the language of our communication.
 Online Writer and the New Age Popular 227

Going back to its genesis and mapping its evolution, we see

that the written word has constantly evolved over time based on
society’s needs. The earliest forms of written communication were
cave paintings. Twenty-five thousand years later the Sumerians
in southern Mesopotamia started preserving their information
in the form of pictographs by writing on clay tablets and baking
them. By 2000 BC, we had a full script, capable of communicating
the most abstract ideas. Then emerged the alphabetical system
invented by the Greeks which reduced the number of symbols
to just 24 characters. At one time, people didn’t feel the need to
put spaces between words but that also evolved. Then with the
invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th
century, books could become available on a much larger scale. As
a consequence of this mapping, researchers have concluded that
the evolution of the written word has been based on people’s
convenience. ‘Difficult’ has been replaced by ‘Easy’. The Chinese
character system, consisting of approximately 4,000 characters is
decaying and the Roman Numeric system and the Greek alphabet
consisting of just 24 characters have survived even to this day. If
the trend continues, says Thomas T. Hills, Professor of Psychology
at the University of Warwick, England, “We should all be speaking
and writing something like ‘Twitterese’ in the next several hundred
years.” (Hills, 2015).
Moreover, the critique about lack of formalised grammatical
structure and using it as an excuse for branding poetry on the
internet as irrelevant is well invalidated by the works of E.E.
Cummings which prove that ‘lack of structure’ is not equivalent to
lack of literary mettle.

Me up at does

out of the floor

quietly stare

a poisoned mouse

still who alive

228 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

is asking What
have i done that

You wouldn’t have

(Cummings, 73 Poems, 1962)
Cummings uses different forms and structure in his poetry,
peculiar spacing and no use of punctuation. These add volume
to his thoughts and feelings; no more than four words in each
line give a rhythmic effect to the poem and what is remarkable is
that he uses no extra words—exactly what is required and sufficient,
quite similar to the whole idea of micropoetry which is an internet
sensation. The fact of the matter is that though it is impossible for
any critic of American literature to ignore or belittle Cumming’s
vitality today, in the 1920s he excited much disagreement. He did
not follow in the footsteps of the 20th century poets who focused
on the metaphysical. Indifferent to the prevalent trends, Cummings
ventured back to the poetry of “full blown emotion” and began to
write poems of “lush and sometimes overripe sensuality” (Roberts,
2017). His poetry and technique were unconventional; so is the idea
of ‘Online Literature’ to the upholders of the canon. But literature
is the product of people’s reality; its flow is like water—inevitable
and it takes whatever shape it is given.
Online literature, of course, has mostly to do with words
but has more to it than words. In a fast-moving digital world,
people scroll faster than they jog. It becomes essential to catch
the attention of the viewer and give their eye a gaze to behold.
Aesthetically pleasing content is what these viewers are looking for
and online writers are not shying away from giving them a multi-
sensory experience. Combining various art forms with writing is
a tremendously appreciated trend on the internet. The shot of a
piece of paper, with the typewriter font, held subtly in one hand as
the sun shines in the background, is one example of aesthetically
good framing for a picture to be uploaded on one’s writing page.
Neatly arranged Instagram squares are a trend too. An Instagram
account by the name of Paradox & Metaphors run by Pratishtha
Khattar employs such framing strategies along with handwritten
 Online Writer and the New Age Popular 229

micropoetry and has a following of more than 45,000 people. One

of her poems, ‘again’, has a structural beauty to it:
Isn’t it beautiful­
this loving,
hurting,
healing,
and f
a
l
l
i
n
g again?
(Khattar, 2018)
Yet another Instagram page by Salma El-Wardany has over
50,000 followers and her one-liners such as, “There are too many
ghosts in your eyes and it is too cold to stay” ( 2018) make her
readers swoon and ardently follow her work. Phil Kaye and Sarah
Kay are another well-known duo in the spoken word circle. They
have also been on international tours for their poetry shows and are
loved by their audience. Talking of Spoken Word, the unmissable is
Rupi Kaur, the self-proclaimed ‘mother’ of Milk and Honey (2014)
and The Sun and Her Flowers (2017). Her journey of publishing
two books of poetry has been parallel to her journey online as a
poetess and a spoken word artist. Having over 4 million followers
on Instagram alone, she has a huge loyal reader base. Known for
her articulate illustrations and beautiful spoken poetry, Rupi Kaur
is now an ever-growing community of people. Another innovative
account is that of Tishani Doshi, a poetess who amalgamates her
beautiful words with dancing. Her spoken poetry accompanies
her dance movements in a rhythmic fashion which makes her
emotions and feelings come out even stronger. The performance of
her poem, ‘Girls are Coming Out of the Woods’ (2018) has been
appreciated by people in India, UK and Ireland.
230 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Online Writing comes with the need for an understanding of

how the internet works. To create a social media presence, it is
vital for an aspirant to identify their genre and then learn about
promotional tools and techniques so as to reach their audience
in order to maximise engagement. Regularity and consistency
are essential elements to make readers stick to the pages. Making
creative content is the most significant part of the whole process
as mentioned before and to market that content is an art. The
use of hashtags and a good understanding of SEO (Search Engine
Optimisation) are important if one intends to remain in the online
community.
With the idea of efficient author-reader engagement arises the
concept of ‘Online Activism’. There are a number of writer-activists
on the internet who are working towards a cause, building social
media circles for providing a platform for healthy discussions
where readers can also engage with the authors, talk and educate
themselves. Harnidh Kaur, a Mumbai-based poet, author and
a social commentator, is extremely vocal about her political
opinions on her Instagram account. There is an instant sense
of connection for the readers to the author and that works as a
solid ground for any sort of movement to grow. “The poet is no
longer an intangible entity”, says Harnidh Kaur (Ghoshal, 2018).
Her poems cover a wide range of issues ranging from feminism,
sexual violence to love and heartbreak. She has been one of the
front runners during the Me-Too Movement in India online and
has actively engaged in educating people about the issues that are
critical to understand. Sharing struggles that women face, based on
the accounts of women who confided in her to share their stories
and writing poems about her own feelings and thoughts on issues,
she has contributed significantly in carrying the momentum of the
Me-Too movement in India. Online activism as a concept has its
own share of techniques. Neologisms, peculiar coinages, famous
hashtags on the internet bind everyone who is talking about
the same thing at different places into a single cycle. Mostly the
pioneers in the working of that cycle are these writer-activists. Amid
loads of information, encountering one ‘new’ word repetitively on
 Online Writer and the New Age Popular 231

social media catches the attention of the viewer, the phenomenon

referred to as “attention hacking”. Another interesting aspect is that
there are random people, hundreds and thousands of them having
a very sophisticated conversation at the same time on the comment
section of a random post by an online writer, communicating with
each other, engaging in a debate or a discussion very sincerely.
The author-reader engagement online provides a solid ground
and security for the writer where they have a chance to know their
readers and identify with them. In a matter of a few minutes, the
writers get instant feedback to their work and get to know what
the readers are expecting from them. For example, Akhil Katyal
recently asked for suggestions from his followers on social media
about the title of the book he was translating into English (Ravish
Kumar, Ishq Mein Shahar Hona, 2018). It was eventually titled A
City Happens in Love (Ghoshal, 2018). Another example is that of
Miranda Dickinson who used Twitter to get suggestions on plot
development, characters’ names from her followers and eventually
published the bestseller Take A Look At Me Now (2015). Jennifer
Egan’s Black Box (Constable & Robinson, 2014) appeared as a
series of tweets before being published in The New Yorker (London
Magazine, 2019). This is very similar to what serialised publications
allowed ‘classic’ authors to do. Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist
(1839), David Copperfield (1850) and Bleak House (1853)—his most
famous works—in instalments, going through several plot changes
according to the readers’ responses before publishing their final
version. Today this process is just easier with the internet.
All these examples talk of the advantages of rapid author-reader
communication. But this also makes online writers vulnerable to all
sorts of criticism. It is like living under constant surveillance. If the
internet gives them instant feedback on their work, it also doesn’t
save them from scrutiny every step of the way. Najwa Zebian, the
Lebanese-Canadian author of Mind Platter (2018) and The Nectar of
Pain (2018), who is also an online writer with one million followers,
regularly shares her poems and excerpts from her books. When
she gave up her Hijab, she was subjected to extreme criticism and
received messages full of hatred. Her lifestyle choice, something
232 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

personal to her, became the topic of intense public discussion. But

it was her followers and readers who also supported her and that
generated a support movement of sorts within the community of
her readers. People engaged in a thoughtful discussion and Najwa
Zebian unhesitatingly took to answer her critics.
News blogs and editorials on the internet also serve an important
purpose. For the majority of people today who scan through the
news on their phones, opinion pieces on platforms like Youth Ki
Awaaz, Women’s Web, She The People are a sensation. One gets to
see the world through different eyes; for example, somebody who
grew up in a mining community writing about mining, unlike in
the print media where only a handful of people who get to publish
their pieces write about the marginalised. In recent times, there
has been a shift in perspective—it is time for the marginalised to
speak for themselves rather than have them represented through
some other lens which gradually leads to an ideological hijack.
For example, representation of Dalit voices, their struggles against
casteism and listening to what they have to say is essential to the
movement of heading towards an ‘equal for all’ society. Mahitosh
Mandal, Professor of English at Presidency University, Kolkata,
having an interest in Dalit Studies, Hinduism and Psychoanalysis,
writes:
Speak in broken, ungrammatical sentences; say out your say even
if they consider you as ‘not quite of an intellectual’. Remember,
if you are lagging behind in their eyes, the fault is not yours, the
fault is theirs. Articulate your suffering, make noise (Mandal,
2015).
This is the essence of online journalism. In fact, journalistic
sources outside the mainstream media keep mainstream media in
check. They often critique their reporting and what they are focusing
on in the name of news. The age of the Internet reminds one of
Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (1859)—“Best of times, Worst
of times”—that is what this is. The challenge is that now anybody
can publish and it poses the threat of losing one’s work in the
black hole of the universe of the internet since we are flooded with
information. Consequently, there is also bad information which
 Online Writer and the New Age Popular 233

travels as easily as good information. Then there is the distraction

provided by ‘clickbait’. The problem of fake news persists because
people lack the ability to decipher, they just read the headlines
which are framed with malicious motives. The real solution lies
not in boycotting internet news because even mainstream media
doesn’t ensure positive journalism. Today, therefore, there is a need
for ‘information literacy’, the need to teach people how to read
through all the information in a real way.
As a matter of fact, social media is not harming literature,
rather it is saving it. With libraries losing their significance and
art budgets decreasing, perhaps the internet is the best way to
engage people with the arts and keep it alive. The first Twitter
Fiction Festival was held in March 2014 (London Magazine, 2019).
They invited users to create their own stories in 140 characters
instalments, Greek myths were creatively told in 100 tweets and
what not, a clear effort to revive literature. In the Indian context,
the Delhi government-funded Urdu Academy worked on a plan in
2017 to use social media to create an online buzz before its events
(Nath, 2017). They hired a social media manager and made their
monthly magazines Aiwan-e-Urdu and Mahnama Umang available
on their website. Events like Jashn-e-Rekhta gained momentum and
a younger audience through engagement on the internet.
David Corn, an American political journalist and author spoke
on the ‘Impact of Social Media on Politics, Culture and Scholarly
Communication’ at Brown University, USA in July 2017 (Corn,
et al., 2017). He referred to Digital Media as “empowering” and
shared his own two different experiences of working in the print
with The Nation magazine and also for an e-magazine, Mother Jones.
Having worked in print for 25 years he described how it would
take him days and weeks to write a story, wait for it to come out
on paper and get a stamp on it, then a week or two for it to come
out to only the subscribers. And then to send it to people who
he thought would benefit from his work, the non-subscribers. He
would have to make photocopies of it, fold it up, put it in the
envelopes, write addresses and put stamps on it and then send it
out. David Corn thanks the digital revolution and says:
234 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

A lot of the gatekeeping functions have been blown up, and

thus people, whether it’s me, or whether conservatives, or people
who are non-ideological but are working outside the mainstream
media universe, now have access to great audiences. And Mother
Jones, we get between 10 and 15 million visitors a month (2017).
There is no denying the fact that online writing, even with its
challenges and loopholes, has created what David Corn calls “a
much freer information ecosystem”. If it was not for the internet
and our rapid engagement with the web space in the 21st century,
human society would have not grown as much as it has today. With
the change in gatekeeping attitude of the pre-internet era and the
paths for the online writer well laid out, not only have we saved
literature but ensured its place and relevance in the centuries to
come.

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 Contributors
Aisha Qadry is an independent scholar and educator. She studied
English Literature at Miranda House and did her Masters from
Faculty of Arts, University of Delhi. She submitted her MPhil
thesis at Jamia Millia Islamia on Auteur theory. She has also taken
courses in Literature and Communicative English at University
of Delhi and Jamia Millia Islamia. Her areas of academic interest
include Popular Fiction, Gender Studies and Film Studies. She has
also published poetry in online journals such as Ink Drift and The
Ibis Head Review.

Anupama Jaidev Karir, teaches English at Maharaja Agrasen

College, University of Delhi. She holds a PhD in literature from
the Department of English, University of Delhi. Her research
areas include Romani studies, narratives of the Indian Emergency
of 1975, narratives of witch-hunts, popular reading, and cultural
historiography of itinerant communities in the subcontinent.
She also writes and translates from Hindi to English. She has
presented papers in national and international conferences related
to narratives of the Emergency, witch-hunts, the Romani Indian
connection She has some published work in related areas as
well. Her more recent publications include research papers titled
“History, Memory and the Aggregate of The Remains of the Day”
and “Revisiting the Emergency: Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s Delhi Calm”
in Literary Voice, a UGC Care journal, and a book chapter titled
“Myth, Misogyny and Marginalization: A Reading of Mahasweta
238 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

Devi’s Bayen” in a volume titled Re-storying the Indigenous and the

Popular Imaginary.

Arunabha Bose is Assistant Professor of English at Vivekananda

College, University of Delhi. He previously taught at Shyam Lal
College (M), University of Delhi till 2015. He has been associated
with the UGC Postgraduate e-Pathshala Project since 2014 and has
contributed on Gender Studies. He has lectured and presented
papers at various international and national seminars including
the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla (2017). He has
published extensively in international journals and books. His
research publications are on Mahasweta Devi, Subaltern History
and Bengali Literature.

Deblina Rout is an academic from Jadavpur and Presidency

University, Kolkata. Her research interests include South Asian
literature, postcolonial studies, gender studies, environmental
humanities, amidst other areas. She has previously published
articles on Indian and African postcolonial literatures.

Gautam Choubey is a critic, columnist and a translator, and

teaches English at ARSD College, University of Delhi. He has
translated works of Basanta Satpathy, Shrilal Shukla and Brajnath
Badjena, among others. His English translation of classic Bhojpuri
novel Phoolsunghi—the first ever for a Bhojpuri novel—has been
recently published by Penguin Random House to critical aclaim.
His other recent works include a Hindi translation of Andre
Beitelle’s Democracy and Its Institutions (Oxford University Press).
He is presently working on a history of Bhojpuri literature and a
monograph tentatively tilted “Using Mahatma”.

Indrani Das Gupta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of

English, Maharaja Agrasen College, University of Delhi. Currently
pursuing her PhD from the Department of English, Jamia Millia
Islamia in the area of Indian Science Fiction, she is engaged in
the examination of the interface of science fictionality, paradigms
of nation-state inflected with postmodernist and postcolonialist
 Contributors 239

approaches, and the social variables that constitute the ontological

existence of man. Her areas of specialisation are Science Fiction,
Detective Literature, Postmodern British Literature, Modern
British Literature, Victorian Literature, British Romantic Literature,
Popular Culture, and Sports Culture. She has published prolifically
in international journals and books. Being interested in the shape
and power of words, she aspires to be a writer.

Neha Singh teaches literature at Kamla Nehru College, University

of Delhi as an Assistant Professor of English. Her research interests
focus on Children’s Literature, Fantasy Writing and Theories of
Popular Culture. She has teaching experience of eleven years in
various colleges of University of Delhi and has taught texts in the
areas of Children’s Literature, Women’s Writing, Gender Studies,
British and European Theatre and Novel, and Literary Theory and
Communication Studies. She has published in the areas of Fantasy
Writing, Theatre of the Absurd and Postcolonial Writing. Neha is
currently pursuing her PhD at the Department of Humanities and
Social Sciences, IIT Delhi in the field of Digital Humanities, with
special focus on Violence and Social Media.

Ojasvi Kala, a young academic at the University of Delhi, focuses on

giving humane qualities to the actions and practices of the literary
world in order to better comprehend the history and understand
the present trends in the popular commercial fiction. Her primary
interest lies in observing and highlighting the pattern of negligence
that has been imposed on popular commercial fiction as a genre.
Most of her research particularly circles around exploring the
manner, perceptions and the psyche of and the pressures endured
by the outcasts, the ‘othered’ in order to better comprehend the
trends and practices of a rigid and an uncompromising society. A
passionate literature enthusiast, she aspires to pursue it for long.

Prachi Sharma is a young writer at the University of Delhi who

dabbles in using Hindi-Urdu and English as her primary medium
of writing. Her hobby is to put together aesthetically pleasing
240 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

content by the fusion of different artforms on her social media. She

keenly follows writers and artists on the internet and otherwise. She
has an ever growing interest in reading columns and newsletters
both in the print and the digital space. Still exploring the vistas of
the literary world, her most favourite writer by far is Rabindranath
Tagore. Her go to read is The Little Prince and her favourite magazine
is Aeon.

Pranjali Gupta, is a student of English Literature and has completed

her Masters from the University of Allahabad. She is interested in
Children’s Literature for further academic research.

Rachit Raj teaches English literature at Non Collegiate Women’s

Education Board (NCWEB), Sri Aurobindo College, University of
Delhi. He is also pursuing his doctoral research in the field of
disability studies at the Faculty of Arts, University of Delhi, in
which he has also made several paper presentations. Rachit wishes
to work extensively in the field of disability studies, mapping the
presence, condition, and representation of disability across time
and culture, trying to establish a pertinent presence of disability
as a core part of the lived reality. As a film critic, his reviews are
frequently published on online portals. An aspiring novelist, his
other interest is popular culture studies.

Ruchi Nagpal, a Project Fellow under the aegis of UGC SAP DRS,
Phase III, Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia is pursuing
her doctoral research in the Department of English, Jamia Millia
Islamia, Delhi. She has presented papers at various national
and international seminars on different literary topics with a
major thrust on popular fiction vis-à-vis postmodern theoretical
developments.

Sangeeta Mittal is Associate Professor in the Department of

English, Maharaja Agrasen College, University of Delhi. She has
over 25 years experience of teaching English Literature, with the
Jacobean Age, Restoration Literature and the Romantics as her
favourite areas. Her dissertation on “Delhi Culture: A Literary
 Contributors 241

Perspective” undertakes an in-depth interdisciplinary analysis of

“Delhi Culture” using Cultural, Urban and Memory studies to
encapsulate the historical, topical, material and urban aspects of this
complex and layered phenomenon. She has extended her research
on Delhi through research papers. Having been a member of the
organising committee, chair, paper presenter and invited speaker at
Interdisciplinary National Conferences on Biodiversity and Climate
Change and City Lives: Spaces and Narratives, she plans to continue
her work on city and environment. With passionate interest in
institution building, she has courses in educational leadership to
her credit. She has contributed extensively to the corporate life of
the College by serving in most portfolios and positions. She has
taken up new writing papers in CBCS curriculum, viz. Creative
Writing, Academic Writing, Travel Writing and Translation
Studies and wishes to strengthen this interest and expertise through
resource building and FDPs.

Shashi Prava Tigga is an Assistant Professor in the Department of

English, St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), University of Ranchi,
Jharkhand. She worked as an Assistant Professor in the constituent
colleges of University of Delhi for several years before joining
St. Xavier’s College, Ranchi. Apart from academics, she has also
worked on several socio-cultural and economic projects sponsored
by national and international organisations such as International
Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialised agency
of United Nations, Caritas India, Caritas Sri Lanka, Indian Social
Institute (New Delhi) and ICSSR. She is associated with local social
groups and has actively promoted education for underprivileged
children and weaker sections of society. She has also counselled and
guided teachers of St. Peter’s School, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand in
redesigning their curriculum and conducting online classes during
the Covid-19 lockdown period. Her areas of research interest include
Post-Colonial Studies, Translation Studies, Subaltern Literature,
Modern European Drama, Women’s Writing and Migration
Studies. Her MPhil dissertation was on translation studies. The title
of her dissertation is “Finding a Space for the Subaltern: Reading
and Translating Francisca Kujur’s Kurukh ki Anugooj”.
 Index

adaptations 29, 117-18, 134, 173, Bhojpuri 7, 29-30, 87-99, 238

177-78 literature 88-91, 93, 238
Aditi Maheshwari 16, 21 Bhoolbhulaiya 107, 113
Advaita Kala 16, 20, 80 Biwi No. 1 (1999) 93
Agantuk 102, 105 Book of Job 12
Agatha Christie 72, 80 Border (1997) 93
Akhil Katyal 225, 231, 234 Bridget Jones’s Diary 49
Akshay Chhikara 217 Byomkesh Bakshi 30, 100-01, 105,
Alankrita Sood 217-18 118
Amba 32, 176, 179, 180, 183-88
Amish Tripathi 24, 175, 196 canon 20, 22, 25, 28, 44-46, 48,
Amitav Ghosh 24-25, 58, 59 53, 56-58, 89, 103, 223, 228
Anne Bradstreet 76, 84 carnivalesque 94, 157-58, 167
Anuj Gosalia 212 caste 91, 98, 178, 182, 188, 226
Anuja Chauhan 21 celebrity 33, 198, 200, 207
Anuradha Marwah 16, 21 celluloid 29-30, 108, 156, 160, 172
Arjun Appadurai 178 Charles Dickens 10, 44, 72, 231-32
Arjun Tiwari 90 Charlotte Bronte 44
Arthur Conan Doyle 116 Chetan Bhagat 24, 33, 71-72, 76,
Ashwin Sanghi 199 78, 80, 195-97, 199
Asur (2020) 127 Chick-lit 16, 200
Avantika Mohan 199, 203 Chintan Ruparel 212
Avijit Ghosh 88 Christopher Pawling 42
CID 118, 126
Banaras 90, 95 city writing 138
Bheeshma 181, 183-88 class 22
244 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

classic 26-28, 41, 43-46, 48-51, 61, Faraaz Kazi 201

70, 73, 80-84, 94, 116, 163, Feluda 7, 30-31, 100-13, 118
174, 224, 231, 238 feminine 110, 179, 182, 203
corruption 102, 144, 146 flaneur 105, 138, 151, 153
counter culture 20 flash fiction 33, 208-15, 217-21
Crime Patrol 118, 126 Ian Fleming, From Russia with
Love (1958) 80
David Crystal 226
Deepa Aggarwal 16, 21 G.N. Devy 87
Delhi Calm 21, 31, 138-40, 142, gatekeeping 222, 224, 234
145-46, 149, 153-54, 170, 237 gender 32, 104, 110, 125, 151,
democracy 138-41, 143-46, 158 173, 178-79, 182, 186-90, 238
detective 104-07, 109, 111, 239 genre literature 41
Devapriya Roy 16, 21 George Orwell 29
Devdutt Pattanaik 199 globalisation 20, 23, 34
Dexter 7, 31, 114-15, 119-24, 126­ globality 138, 146
29 God of Small Things (1997) by
Dexter Morgan 119-20 Arundhati Roy 74
Dharamdas 90 Graphic Novel 8, 31, 133-39, 141,
Dharni Das 90 148-50, 152, 154
Diane Williams 211, 221 Guddu Rangeela 93, 95-97
diaspora 59-61 Gulshan Nanda 118
digital age 23, 26, 210
Durjoy Datta 8, 32, 76, 195-96, Harish Trivedi 24, 37
197, 200-02, 205-07 Harry Potter series 50, 84
Hazari Prasad Dwivedi 92
E.E. Cummings 227, 236 Hemingway Foundation/PEN
economic liberalisation 23, 59, 146 Award 28, 53, 59
Edgar Allan Poe 116, 127, 219 Hera Pheri (2000) 93
Emergency 8, 31-32, 139-44, 146, highbrow 20, 54, 104, 134
156-62, 164, 167-72, 237 homoerotic 90, 111, 187
Emily Bronte 44
epic 32, 173-74, 177-78, 180-81, I.S. Jauhar 8, 31, 156, 160
183-84, 189-90 Indian Popular Commercial
Ernest Hemingway 208, 221 Fiction (IPCF) 17, 22, 34-35,
establishment 145 81
Indira Gandhi 35, 140, 160, 171
fantasy 31, 33, 134, 202, 239 Instagram 23, 26, 197, 205, 208,
 Index 245

211-12, 215, 221, 224, 226, Mahabharata 8, 32, 173-74, 176­

228-30 90
internet 36, 114, 225-26, 232, 234 Mahatma Gandhi 161
Internet Movie Database (IMDb) Mansi Subramaniam 16
114 marketing 11, 195, 198
Interpreter of Maladies 7, 28, 53, 55, matriarch 32, 180
58-59, 63-65 matsyagandhi 181-82
Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan 8,
Jaikant Singh ‘Jai’ 90 32, 173, 176, 179
Jama Masjid 148 Me-Too Movement 230
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice 48­ micro-fiction 33, 208-09, 213,
50 215, 220-21
Jatayu 100, 103-04, 106, 110, 112 micropoetry 226, 228-29
Jhumpa Lahiri 28, 53-55, 58-60, Milk and Honey 215-17, 220, 229
64 millennials 33, 202-03, 209, 215
John G. Cawelti 41 Mills and Boon 195
Mirakee 217-18
Kabir 90 Mona Sinha 3, 4, 14, 19, 37
Karamchand 118 Morag Shiach 43
Karan Verma 16, 21, 81 Karan Verma, Dhruv 21, 81
Karthika V.K. 16, 21 Mulk Raj Anand 23, 58, 73
Kati Patang (1971) 95 myths 22, 32, 139, 173-77, 188,
Kitsch 15, 19-20, 35 233
Krishnadev Upadhyay 89
Najwa Zebian 231-32, 235
Lewis Caroll’s Nasbandi (1978) 31, 156-57, 160,
Through the Looking Glass 163, 169, 171
(1871) 80 Neeraj Srivastava 16, 21
Alice in Wonderland 80 Neeti Rustagi 203
literary fiction 10, 11, 25, 27-28, neoliberalism 13-14, 138
53-57, 60, 62, 78, 136 New York Times 36, 67, 78, 215, 220
literary speculative fiction 32 Ngugi wa Thiong 33, 223
love stories 48, 201 Novoneel Chakraborty 201-02
lowbrow 20, 54, 56, 91, 104, 134
online activism 26, 230
Maanvi Ahuja 203 Oprah Winfrey 53, 59
Macbeth 11, 43 Orvana Ghai 203
Madhumati (1958) 94
246 Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces

parodies 134, 158, 160 Raja Rao 23-24, 58, 73

Pataal Lok 126 Ramayana 174, 176, 178, 190
patriarchal 32, 49, 60, 169, 174, Ratnakar Tripathy 88, 98
180, 182, 185-87 Ravinder Singh 25, 76, 196-97,
Penguin Random House 16, 21, 199, 201, 206
214 Ravish Kumar 231
People’s Linguistic Survey of India Raymond Williams 9, 48, 55, 88
87 Red Fort 141, 143
Pinterest 224 Red Rose (1980) 124
political novel 139 Romance 14, 32-33, 48, 134, 166,
popular classic 28, 44-46, 48, 73, 195, 197, 200-02, 204-05
80-81 romance fiction 32-33, 202
popular commercial fiction 26­ Rupa Publications 84, 200
27, 34-35, 70-72, 74-77, 79-80, Rupi Kaur 33, 215, 220, 229, 236
239
popular culture 41, 51, 55, 145, Saavdhaan India 118
156, 174-75, 202, 239-40 Sahitya Akademi 24, 35, 87, 90
popular fiction 15, 19-20, 26, Salman Rushdie’s
28, 41-42, 47-48, 50, 53-56, Midnight’s Children 58
67, 78-80, 82-84, 103-04, 106, The Satanic Verses (1988) 74
113, 195-96, 198-200, 219 Sanjay Gandhi 140
popular literature 24, 28, 41-42, Sarnath Banerjee’s Corridor 31, 138,
45-48, 50-51, 53, 55, 71, 80, 147, 153
101, 195, 224 Satyajit Ray 30, 118
popular resistance 32, 156 Satyavati 176, 179-83, 186-89
postcolonial 104, 239 She The People 232
postmodernism 51 Shehenshah (1988) 93
postmodernity 148, 152 Sherlock Holmes 30, 103, 116
Pratishtha Khattar 228, 236 Shikhandini 179-80, 183-84, 186­
Prem Kumari Srivastava 3, 4, 14, 87
19 Shobha De 21, 26
Pulitzer Prize 28, 53, 55, 58-59 Sigappu Rojakkal (1978) 124
pulp 7, 9, 14, 20, 25-26, 118, 167 Simi Malhotra 16, 21, 34
pulp fiction 10, 26, 118 social media 26, 32, 49, 81, 195­
200, 203, 205, 208-09, 212-13,
R.K. Narayan 23-24, 58, 73 217, 223-26, 230-31, 233, 235
Raj Kumar 16, 21 Sonar Kella 101, 103, 105, 108-10
Raj Narain 140, 145 statecraft 8, 32, 173, 178-79, 190
 Index 247

sterilisation 145, 157, 171 Twitter 23, 26, 197, 205, 211-12,
Sudeep Nagarkar 201 225, 231, 233
Suman Gupta 34
Surender Mohan Pathak 16, 20, Uday Narayan Tiwari 89, 91
80, 118 urban landscape 150

T.S. Eliot 43 Vani Prakashan 16, 21

Tabish Khair 16, 25, 32 Vikram Seth 24, 58
Tayyib Hussain ‘Peedit’ 89
television series 128, 197 Waiting for Godot 11
Terribly Tiny Tales 8, 33, 208 Wanted (2009) 93
The Hindu 78, 84, 207, 221 Water Bottle (2019) 127
The Scribbled Stories 205, 215 Wattpad 224
thriller 30, 100, 106, 108-09 whodunit 108-09, 112-13, 125-28
Todorov 108-09 William Shakespeare 11, 72
Top Ten Book List 53, 59 Women’s Web 232, 236
Topshe 100, 106-08, 112
Tumblr 23, 215, 224 Youth Ki Awaaz 232