But if chick-lit is in short supply, there is no dearth of dinky-lit. Most publishers have succumbed to the lure of the little book. Dainty books as small and colourful as picture postcards are being snapped up at bookstores as rapidly as they are being brought out by publishers. The latest in Roli’s bestselling pocket art series, for instance, are the pocket-sized biographies of dancing stars, Birju Maharaj and Kelucharan Mohapatra. Even Penguin India has succumbed to popular taste by coming out with its own pocket series of aphorisms of Osho, Gandhi, Krishnamurthy. Rupa, similarly, is doing brisk business with their pocket Tagore editions. The only living writer packaged in this cutesy manner is Khushwant Singh.
Those who look down on dinky-lit would do well to heed American poet Maya Angelou’s words. The US greeting card giant, Hallmark, recently released a line of greeting cards, pillows and candle-holders carrying, instead of the usual cutesy lines, aphorisms from Angelou’s poetry. But Angelou, who will be out with the fifth and last volume of her autobiography this summer, is not wincing. "If I am the people’s poet," she says, "then my work should be in people’s hands." Not many living poets—or writers—could brave such dinkyfying.
