Sizzling clones of western bestsellers have a huge market
THEIR inspiration is James Hadley Chase, Harold Robbins, or Sidney Sheldon. And titles read as zany as Goli Karegi Faisala, Mahakaand, Sabse Bada Khiladi or Vardi Wala Gunda. Themes range from murder mystery, thrillers, social fantasy to adventure. Flashy jackets promise "the dance of death, blood, gore, adventure, romance and titillating fragrance of virgin youth". All in full measure.
Pulp fiction in Hindi, compared to Hindi literature, is a great success story. It is a flourishing industry with run-of-the-mill writers churning out more than two titles every month and sales figures reaching about 20,000 to 30,000 copies.
Take the writers of these potboilers. Ved Prakash Sharma, Surendera Mohan Pathak, Raj Bharti, Anil Mohan et al are names any pocket book reader would have no difficulty recognising. Ved Prakash Sharma’s Vardi Wala Goonda, based on Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, sold more than five lakh copies the day it was released. So far Sharma has 130 titles to his credit. And he has competition in Surendra Mohan Pathak, an MSc in Mathematics, who has written about 200 titles in the last 26 years. The competition and the volume of profits in Hindi pulp fiction can be gauged from the way publishing houses woo writers with offers of free cars and air-conditioners. Anil Mohan, who has recently joined Manoj Pocket Books, was reportedly lured by a huge salary offer according to industry sources. Mohan, who is in the business of writing pulp fiction, has written under pseudonyms like Manoj, Keshav Pandit and Samit, among others.
It is a full-scale industry. Writers and publishers alike launch a largescale marketing blitz to promote books. Huge amounts are also spent on advertising for these books both in the electronic media and through hoardings. Prize money contests are also organised to woo the readers.
Pulp fiction, or parallel literature, flourishes in Malayalam too. It is popularly called Paingili (songbird) fiction after the book, Padatha Paingili, written by a pioneer of Malayalam pulp fiction, Muttathu Varkey. Other Malayalam pulp fiction writers are Kanam E.J. and Malika Yunus. Their books are either Mills & Boon incarnates, or adventures in the Middle East.
Pulp fiction has been popularised by mainstream newspapers in Kerala. It all started in the ’80s when Mangalam started publishing pulp fiction. They were followed by the Malayala Manorama weekly, which serialised juicy pulp fiction to create a wider base both for its own paper as well as for the pulp fiction. Many of these novels have been made into movies and television serials. However, the popularity of pulp fiction in no way endangers the shelf value of quality literature.