As literary launches become glittering social extravaganzas, the lowly reader starts to drop out
Were you at Vikram Seth’s last week? No? Then at Siddhartha Basu’s the day before? Or at Raj Kamal Jha’s? No? Not at Patwant Singh’s either? Surely then at Saeed Jaffrey’s or Vajpayee’s or Githa Hariharan’s? No? Never clinked wine at the British Council ‘charbagh’? Or swilled your vodka at the Habitat? Never lunged for a passing wing of chicken while having your copy of Beach Boy signed by the author?
Oh, that’s odd really, because literary launches are quite ‘ze thing’ in Delhi. Have been for a while now, but until about a year ago they were few and far between— maybe three or four a year, looked forward to with keen-eyed anticipation. Now it’s a deluge. One a week, on an average, if not two. Gone are the low-key I I C dos with readings followed by samosas and chai. Gone the sad solitary rounds authors made to press offices soliciting notices and reviews from editors with sweaty copies of books tucked under elbows. Gone the motley straggle that used to gather to mark a book at the Roshanara or Press Club. Hosted by the British Council, the India Habitat Centre and more recently even five-star hotels, book launches have become glittering, chattering affairs. Frequent fixtures in social calendars, red-inked dates in people’s diaries, high-pro file occasions where Delhi society loves to ‘meet the author’, backslap, and drink glasses of (free) laudatory wine while searching for familiar faces in the melee.
Typically an evening goes thus: a celebrity intro duces the author (in the Council, it’s Colin Perchard, the cultural minister), then the ribbon around the book’s spine is snipped, the author reads, questions from the audience follow: "Mr Khilnani, sir, the Tiananmen Square incident was a terrible blot on Chinese history, indeed, on human history, a slur on the very idea of personal freedom and peaceful protest..." Three paragraphs later, Sunil Khilnani, author of The Idea of India— an essay on Nehru ’s vision of a modern India— says weakly: "Yes?". "Well sir," continues his interlocutor, "why didn’t you write about it in your book?"! Most writers also field the reat autobiographical question and the ‘title’ problem: "Which came first Arundhati, the title or the book?" And more in the same vein: "Does the act of creation make you feel elevated, Vikram?" Well , that insightful intellectual exercise done with, the doors open and the 200-odd strong audience spills out onto the bar, to be joined by fifty more who’ve timed their arrival astutely. The snacks are attacked, the menu railed at, the author retires to a corner to sign copies, 10-12 books are sold, a lot of drink is drunk, Rs 20,000-30,000 is spent and a book is launched.
But despite these odd bones in its anatomy, ‘launching out’ has caught on. Says artist-writer Bulbul Sharma: "I love going to launches. It’s a gathering of the clan, trade people come together. One looks forward to it like a shaadi. It’s a good place to catch up, celebrate a book. Lots of people love launches, even if they don’t mean to read the book and I don’t think there ’s anything wrong even in that." Many agree. It’s fun, it’s idiosyncratic, one might be featured in society columns, even be invited to another party!
More seriously, all the free loaders and inane questions notwithstanding, launches draw media attention. They provide authors an interface with their readers, and as Sanjeev Saith of IndiaInk says, a launch evening can be as fine and literary as an author makes it. Like Vikram Seth’s , Allan Sealy’s or Ram Guha’s. Besides, as publisher Urvashi Butalia and Githa Hariharan add, launches might have become a shaastra, something akin to birthday parties with return gifts; but writing remains a lonely art, and it’s nice for the writer to see a large crowd. "It’s like the naming ceremony of a baby," laughs Hariharan.
But as launches become more popular, and prolific, opinions on them have become deeply riven. A lot of the old regulars, people like Hasan Suroor of Hindu, Sunil Sethi, now Lime light presenter, and Roshan Seth— critics, serious readers— have started dropping out, suffering perhaps as Hari-haran says from "launch ennui." Too many of them, the same people, the same conversation and honestly, what have wine, backslapping and mushroom and chicken hors d’oeuvre s to do with literature? Writer Mark Tully blunts that wounding arrow.
" Wining and cocktailing is a stick that’s used to beat anything. Maybe there ’s froth on the surface, but that doesn’t mean there’s no substance below," says he. Besides as anyone would truthfully testify, ‘diplomatic booze’ is but a benign lure.
But launch detractors have sharper ones in their quiver. Do launches create literary insights? Do they help sell books? Are they cost effective? Not at all, going by what Harper Collins editor Renuka Chatterjee says. "It’s gone crazy. It’s like a circus, like cricket or Bollywood." The problem is that every author now expects the glitz evening, the cocktails and the socialites, but given the cost involved— Rs 35,000-45,000 according to Chatterjee— a book would have to sell upwards of 7,000 copies for a launch to pay off. The average sales are 2,000-3,000. Reviews, TV and print interviews, she asserts, have much more impact. "I would argue for a going back to more traditional ways of promoting a book," says she.
AS things stand, there ’s a slim chance of that happening. Having sniffed out its possibilities in image-building, cultural branding and mileage, hotels, corporates and airlines have started to jump onto the bandwagon. Patwant Singh’s book, The Sikhs, was a Scotch and ‘just so’ affair at the Ball room of The Imperial Hotel (funded, it seems, partly by himself); Karen Anand’s cookbook had a four- city tour sponsored by Jet Airways and Pratibha Karan’s H yderabadi Cuisine was a sit-down, metaphorically speaking white-glove affair at the Maurya. The deal-making goes something like this: " We’ll get in a lot of celebrities and journos, " woo publishers and writers. "Oh, then we’ll be glad to pay," bow the hotels. (But such deals can backfire as a poor author found out. Feeling shortchanged of publicity because the number of celebs promised didn’t turn up, the hotel that had hosted his book launch sent him a terribly fat bill!)
Like it or not, launches have built up writing into something more glamorous and less solitary than it used to be, expanded in a sense the catchment area of potential readers ; so, if anything, they’ll get more innovative and glitzy in the days to come. Full Circle launches its New Age titles with ‘healthy sherbet’, Bulbul Sharma tied her book in with an art exhibition, Siddhartha Basu had a spot quiz for his and Penguin almost brought in an orchestra to play at the launch of An Equal Music. They didn’t in the end, but as Seth said of his rather well-pitched, dignified affair, "It’s a necessary evil."
He ought to know, the idea of the book tamasha is deeply embedded in the West . Launches there are wild, whacky and extravagant affairs. In India too, as Perchard of the British Council— the bastion of the book launch— admits, "The cabaret act’s become bigger. We’re wondering if we’re doing too many. Perhaps it’s going a little over the top, but it all depends on whether book deserves that kind of attention. Lau-nches should be quality-driven. If a book eserves it, I’d do double the number. "
But Sunil Sethi and Roshan Seth have other questions. Why this insistence on the launch, they ask? Why not have window displays, newspaper tieins, pre launch activities, more intimate gatherings, more serious panel discussions? Why not a more serious relationship between the media and writers? Why this fashion and fakery? Why open the book world to dilettantes?
David Davidar, Penguin C E O, has the most convincing answers for such volleys. The launch, he says, is not geared for the already serious reader, it is to catch the interest of the "disinterested mass". To do that, there is little else publishers can do, short of "dro p-ping authors from a plane with parachutes or organising readings with authors sitting upside down on chandeliers. I wouldn’t knock it," says he, "it’s an ancient rite. Only the thrill-seekers are bored."
A small, wizened, bearded man earnestly attends every book launch there is in the Capital. A tiny notepad in hand, he walks round the sipping, chewing, smiling rowds, spotting the ‘beautiful people’, and asks for autographs. At the launch of Raj Kamal Jha’s The Blue Bedspread, he stopped Suhel Seth who had done the reading for Jha to write a few words. "On what?", asked Seth a little perplexed. "Oh, anything," the little man replied, "art, theatre, life, anything." He was there again at he An Equal Music do, tugging timidly at Vikram Seth "to write a few words."
Vikram did. Perhaps therein lies the tale.