Another instance of an author-editor partnership that's outlasted even death is that between the late P.V. Narasimha Rao and Udayan Mitra of Penguin. For the last few years, Udayan's been making the rounds of 9, Motilal Nehru Marg in the hope of bringing out the much-awaited Part II of The Insider. Each time Udayan went there (the last was two months before Rao's demise), a few chapters of the manuscript were ready and waiting. So why the delay? Because they were rewritten versions of those he already had in hand. The result: The Insider never gets to Rao's premiership. A hunt is on to locate the famous chapter on the Babri demolition. But with or without it, Udayan thinks he has a decent book which ends with Rao's years in the Rajiv government.
So what if we don't have agents here? Authors are taking things in their own hands. Just look at Maloy Krishna Dhar. When the ex-IB official hawked his book Open Secrets, none of the bigger publishers bit. Now, with Open Secrets a success, Dhar has the best and the biggest knocking at his doors. For his Fulcrum of Evil—Pakistan's ISI Unmasked he's following the Golden Rule of Agents: he who pays the most gets the book.
