Dubey Is No Tolstoy & That’s That: The Contemporary Popular In Hindi
Aakriti Mandhwani The English publishing market today is beside itself with questions of viability, visibility and visualization of the popular book. The contemporary Indian book market in English is clearly witnessing a boom, with a proliferation of genres providing a spectrum of delightful possibilities to an increasingly aspirational reading market that continues to latch on to the fetish of the book and yet is unwilling to pay more than 100 rupees for one. It is no stretch of the imagination to say that there is a book for everyone in Indian popular writing in English today. However, what is its equivalent in Hindi? Is there an equivalent at all? After all, what does it mean to publish the Hindi popular today? I suggest that the current Hindi popular publishing market is indeed marking exciting changes in the way we view language, genres, urbanity, and belonging itself. In this short essay [1] I shall focus on two lines of inquiry. First, I shall examine some changes in the distribution, circulation and writing processes in the contemporary Hindi pulp fiction market, particularly through the Delhi-based publishing house Raja Pocket Books. I shall then focus on a new crop of popular writing being circulated by an upcoming Delhi-based publishing house, Hind Yugm. I am aiming to bring together two stances in popular publishing that might seem to be at variance with each other, to be catering to two different reading markets, and suggest that both of them are, in fact, aiming at a similar kind of consumer today. *** My work on the story of Hindi publishing began three years ago, as I researched Hindi pulp fiction in contemporary North India, especially the trajectory of Raja Pocket Books and its investment, since 2009, in uncharacteristically good production – in the form of glossy covers, superior quality paper and “collector’s editions” – for current best-selling author Surender Mohan Pathak’s novels [2], an unprecedented occurrence in Hindi pulp’s history. This attention to quality came at a price: a Pathak novel now costs twice what it used to at one point. In the past, pulp has always existed as a recyclable form, circulating only at the moment of its publication. However, with Pathak’s newer novels, I found that the Hindi pulp fiction novel had embarked on the road to becoming a collectible [3]. In order to further understand this shift in status and sensibility, I also undertook an extensive literary study of Pathak’s novels from 1970s onwards, focusing on the author’s engagement with the Hindi language in the decades preceding India’s liberalization in 1991 and the differences thereafter. By mapping the figure of Vimal, the much loved hero-protagonist of Pathak’s 42-book-long “Vimal series”, I also engaged myself in a longer study of “heroism” itself, arguing that contemporary pulp fiction articulates a conservative yet markedly aspirational cultural and political aesthetic, both in its production and its emphasis on a refined, class-conscious and chaste use of language. I tried to argue, in short, that “pulp” is no longer “pulp” the way it has been traditionally understood, and the pulp hero, too, attains a new, benevolent-moral articulation. I soon realized that the question of production was intricately connected to understanding patterns of consumption itself and hence reception was an area that demanded greater attention.The major question that arose from such a reading was regarding Pathak’s “new reader”, one who was willing to purchase a “non-pulp” pulp novel for a different kind of “pleasure” – now, however, for twice its earlier price. This, in turn, led to speculation about a new readership. A study of reader responses [4] to Pathak, along with the meticulously framed prefaces to his novels followed. This combination of Raja Pocket Books’ new productions of Pathak: by increasing the price of the novels, along with Pathak’s own transitions in the craft of writing and a substantial readership coming forward to read his new novels, therefore, raises its own set of questions. The new reader, it seems, cherishes Pathak’s new respectability. The very fact that the latest Surender Mohan Pathak novel has been published by Harper Collins Hindi stands as testimony to this change. Linking this transition to what one may call a post-neoliberal ethos in India – the current, supposedly benevolent-moral, “political” yet aspirational ethos – with a reading of Hind Yugm, a newer question arises: does the articulation of the new Hindi readership stop here? Or as expected, such a readership will continue to evolve in interesting directions? *** If Hindi pulp fiction has gained an audience in a more acceptable popular middle-class ethos, it oddly finds contention from the new writers in – for the lack of a better word – “Hinglish” writing. In Divya Prakash Dubey’s short story Keep Quiet from his 2014 collection Masala Chai published by Hind Yugm, a young girl in the 7th grade called Dhun wants to know what love is. She asks her best friend, Surabhi, who also happens to be class monitor. Surabhi, smart in many ways – her understanding of “good” and “bad” comes from a personal understanding of who has been “good” or “bad” to her, which in turn determines which names go up on the blackboard for disciplining and which don’t – goes and asks her mother this same question, because, “क्लास में किसी को भी प्यार का कोई first-hand experience नहीं था” (87) [5], (No one had any first-hand experience of love in the class). Surabhi’s mother, burdened with all the anxieties of raising a girl in a middle-class joint family, slaps her, interrogates her about seeing a boy, and ultimately tells her to stay away from Dhun. Dhun ultimately ends up asking the same question of her own mother, who is amused and tells her that love is what her father and she share for her. Dhun’s next question, to which her mother replies in the affirmative is “बहुत प्यार होने से बच्चे आते हैं क्या मम्मी?” (Does a lot of love bring forth children, mummy? ) (90). This family, the author