Beware Indian mass-market fiction
Beware Indian mass-market fiction. You’ll know it by its low price, high sales volume, glowing reviews by people you don’t suspect are readers and Zagat-like tabloid format, thin vertical pages which artificially pump up the page count.
First I tried Chetan Bhagat’s One Night at the Call Center. That was amateur crap by an investment banker written through the lens of a repressed IITian with a gleefully retrograde, pre-1970s conception of sexuality. Its protagonist counts holding hands with a woman as a major score. I couldn’t bear to read his bestseller Five Point Someone even to pick up IIT color.
Then I checked out Q&A by Vikas Swarup, where the author refuses to pen a sentence longer than five words or any word longer than five letters. I got through 50 pages in 15 minutes, the central gimmick wore thin (pair a Kaun Banega Crorepati format with ’shocking’ short stories about gay men), and I’m looking forward to seeing an Adam Sandler movie because it’ll be smarter than this.
Fofatlal trashed One Night, while Amardeep liked Q&A as a light read.
on Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006, 7:28 pm in Literature › 
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Let me assure you that Five Point Someone would not have gained you any ‘IIT color’ of significance (you will be better off talking to IIT-ians directly - just jump on a Central Line local to Kanjur Marg!).
I still can’t believe the book was such a hit - the writing was devoid of any style, humor or witticism and the storyline slim with glaring chronological and factual errors. Personally, I read it because of having nothing better to do on a 15 hour plane journey. The only part I could sympathize with was the frustration with professors who are inept at teaching, don’t really care about students and the very little constructive research that goes on there. Perhaps people liked it because it dissed IIT and IIT-ians so much ?
5-point someone was a badly written book, but its worth your time if you have nothing better to do (on a flight, train etc). I too read this book enroute to India. It did remind me of my days in IITB…brought back those fond memories. My guess is that only college going students will like this book..which is in itself a big audience in India. It could be one of those cult-classics in college campuses…not becuase of its writing..but becuase of its theme.
And by the way, what about the gruesome cover illustration of “One Night” ? Yuck.
I’m feeling more and more positive now about acquisitions earlier this year like Vandana Singh’s “Younguncle Comes to Town” (which is actually for kids) and the five books of Ashok Banker’s serial novel retelling of The Ramayana (very accessible).
By the way, did you guys livin it up over in Bombay happen to see NDTV’s “Just Books”? I was amazed to see actress Zohra Segal in the front row at a Khushwant Singh event (how old is she? 90? and she spoke well, totally in command of her faculties, I love her!) and Devyani Saltzman talking about her memoir “Shooting Water”.
I met her for an interview earlier this year along with her mother and Lisa Ray (doing the US press tour for the release of “Water” here) and I was impressed by how warm and intelligent and thoughtful she was.