Novels...

My sister’s favourite novel is ‘Five Point someone’. As a matter of fact, it may be one of the two novels my sister has ever read. To make my sister stick to a novel till the end is no mean achievement for an author. Besides, this book has been in India bestseller list for a long time.

So one day I decided to go for the novel. It was a plot around the life of students at IIT Delhi. I couldn’t however relate the life of my institute, IIT Kharagpur, with that of his. Yes there always is the pressure of academics but if you are even a fraction as serious as the protagonists of this novel are, you can easily manage a good grade point average. Academic load in IITs (except IIT Madras) is not as bad as the author tries to portray. May be it was so in his time.

5.some1 is a good fiction, written in a lucid and simple way. The novel has all the masala (I hate to use the bollywood lingo for movies of Karan Johar and associates but couldn’t find any better word) to make it an entertaining teen story –girl, girl’s father who happens to be the professor, vodka and suicide. The dope element was found missing in the novel but that is ok. After all every one doesn’t take grass in college.

What I wonder is how the novel made it to the bestsellers list. Agreed he is a fine storyteller but that is not all to make a novel a good novel and take it to the bestseller list.
Simplicity in narration is essential but not all to make a novel work. I discussed the book over with a few blogger friends who are of the opinion that the book worked because the huge number of engineering students and employees in IT field liked it. Perhaps the era of such novels making top business has started.

Some others are of the opinion that the book worked because of the use of IIT brand name. I don’t blame the author for doing that for every IITian does. A political outfit started by novices called Paritrana made it to the headlines and garnered much attention due to the IIT tag. I shall promptly use the ‘Kgp Sento’ (‘Once a Kgpian always a Kgpian’) to get a good job or to get funding for my start-up if I am ever to start one.

I don’t think the IIT tag had much of an effect for the same author came up with another book ‘One night @t the call centre’ and that too was a success. My sister got a copy of it by shelling only a hundred bucks (cheap!) or so. I came home a few days back after taking clearance from my institute and was strongly recommended the book by my sister.

The dedication page of a novel is where you make sincere dedication to someone you appreciate or love and the author tries to be funny here too.

To my baby twin boys
And the wonderful woman
Who created them*

Appreciating the mother of your kids isn’t bad but why don’t you name her if you sincerely dedicate the book to her. Then I see the * mark and move on to the bottom of the page:

‘*with a little bit of help from me’
Thank you for the clarification. I thought the wonderful woman is an alter ego of Virgin Mary and no man has any contribution in the twins she created. And now that you have mentioned that you helped her a bit, why don’t you mention if you ‘exclusively’ helped her or there were others also who helped in the creation of the twins?

At this stage you readers must be thinking that I am some kind of sick guy with a very dry, humourless and sarcastic sense of mind. I just want to clarify. The author didn’t acknowledge the doctors, nurses and midwives involved in the creation of the twins (if you thought otherwise you are the sick one). The point is, what does the author try to prove with such a comment in the dedication page? And why does he think the readers will find a PJ about his contribution in the birth of his kids so entertaining.

I am not making an Everest out of an anthill. Nor am I here to review some novel for I closed the book after I found the dedication page itself quite preposterous. Mind you, I am just speculating over the reading habits of an average Indian and I have no enmity whatsoever with the author or the novels nor do I want to alienate the fans (and there are many) of these novels.

One positive trend I found about ‘five point someone’ and ‘one night at call centre’ is that these books have helped inculcate reading habit among the Indian youth. Yet I believe there are many talented writers around who don’t get published because market likes simple easy-going entertainers.

After ditching one night @ call centre, I got hold of a translated copy of the Oriya novel ‘Paraja’ by Gopinath Mohanty. It is also a work of fiction (on tribes of Koraput) but gives the reader an insight into their life, culture, traditions, thoughts and religion (yes! While the Bajrang Dal and Christian missionaries fight over whether these people are loyal to Jagadish Hare or Jesus Christ, they have religions of their own). After reading the book I felt a sense of contention that I have understood people and cultures I would otherwise have sneered at. The author made me see what the tribals see, eat what they eat and think the way the tribals think.

I won’t suggest a cookbook to making a good novel, I would just like to express my own views. I feel a good novel is an entertaining narration of a strong plot embedded by informative description (Amitav Ghosh?), ideological and philosophical insights (likes of Rushdie) and reflections on human character (Guide, The English Teacher…RK Narayan still rocks) and emotions (Srikanth or any other book of Sarat Chandra Chatterjee).

There are many writers in regional languages who are extremely talented but don’t get published or get published and don’t get noticed because the reading mass prefers English. For people who don’t have a grasp of regional languages, translations are available. I would recommend you to get hold of any ‘Katha’ collection of short stories or translated classics of Oxford University Press. If you are into reading some good novels, my personal recommendations to you this summer are ‘A Damsel in Distress’ by PG Wodehouse and ‘The Class’ by Erich Segal.