It’s a Crime: Book Review of The Srinagar Conspiracy by Vikram A. Chandra

This book review first appeared in India Today some years ago.

Now, for those of you who don’t know this, I began my career as a published author with three crime thrillers.

They were billed as “India’s first crime novels in English” and I was lauded by the media for apparently pioneering a genre.

(At the time I wrote the books, I had no idea I was doing anything of the sort: I loved reading crime fiction and it was only inevitable that one day I would try my hand at writing crime. Incidentally, I still write crime fiction, and continue to write a novel every year or two. The only difference is that now I don’t offer them for publication – more about that later.)

They also sold reasonably well for those times – back in those days, selling 2,000 copies of a book qualified as a major Indian bestseller.

But later, I allowed the books to go out of print.

The reason? Well, while I enjoyed reading and, briefly, writing crime, I had no intention of becoming a professional crime novelist for the rest of my life. I’m sorry, but no matter how much it pays, I don’t think I can spend my entire life writing just one genre. It would be like boxing my mind in and saying, Do Only This, And Nothing Else.

And the problem was that I became a bit too famous as “India’s crime novelist”.

A.k.a. “Indian James Hadley Chase,” “desi Agatha Christie,” “local Ludlum” and so on. (John Grisham wasn’t yet known here back then.)

Even after “quitting” crime, the label clung to me for a horrifyingly long time.

Why, as recently as last week, I happened to read a comment by Thomas Abraham, CEO of Penguin Books India, referring to Penguin’s search for an Indian crime novel that could become a potential bestseller.

And immediately, the journalist clarifies, they’re not looking for someone of the “Banker or Bahal” variety.

Bahal, of course, refers to Aniruddha Bahal, author of Bunker 13.

And Banker, apparently, refers to me.

Why Banker? Why mention me at all? I produced three slender thrillers that were in print for less than a year, over 12 years ago.

You’d think everyone would have forgotten about them by now, especially since my subsequent books have since sold several lakhs of copies more than those three slim volumes of crime.

Apparently not.

But even more puzzling was the comment by Abraham, who, I have to add here, happens to be my publisher and the publisher of the Ramayana novels and Vertigo in India (as well as all my books in India, for that matter). Abraham clarified that they were not looking for authors like Banker or Bahal because, “they weren’t able to entirely leave their literary pretensions behind”.

He goes on to say that what they’re seeking is an Indian John Grisham. By which I assume he means someone who has absolutely no literary pretensions and just wants to produce one crowd-pleasing entertainer after another, year after year.

Which is fine by me.

(Although I wonder what literary pretensions Abraham found in a novel like The Iron Bra. That actually left me scratching my head for a moment.)

But I have to question their intentions.

If Indian publishers – and readers, for that matter – were really searching for the Great Indian Crime Thriller, then, frankly, mere yaar, they would have found it by now.

The reason they haven’t found such a book, or such an author, is because nobody really wants it.

It takes more than a single book contract to build a John Grisham. It takes editorial nurturing, promotion, marketing, and reader demand.

Why do you think Shobha De hasn’t produced a bestselling book of fiction for so many years?

After all, her books were among the top sellers in the country, weren’t they? (Although, it seems, her non-fiction is much better selling, and much better appreciated too.)

Could it be because, even though she was the bestselling Indian author of her time (and still is), her sales pale in comparison to Grisham’s in India?

If my figures are correct, then the sales ratio of Grisham to De is something on the order of 5:1.

Which begs the question: Maybe Indian readers don’t want an Indian Grisham at all.

Maybe the whole charm of the thriller genre is that American or firang setting, those firang characters and lifestyle, that whole ‘other world’ that one loses oneself in for a few entertaining hours.

Maybe by bringing it down, thud, to Indian everyday reality, it robs the whole motivation of reading a thriller.

Maybe what Indian readers want from Indian authors is one thing – ambitious, literary prose poems that win awards and accolades worldwide, doing us proud, while what they want from thrillers is an entirely different thing – exotic firang lifestyles and ‘those crazy American’ behaviorial quirks’ and serial killers and madcap courtroom dramas, et al.

And never the twain shall meet.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m entirely wrong. Maybe the market has changed and matured of late.

But I’ll believe it when I see it.

Meanwhile, the whole issue also reminded me of this review which I’d written for India Today back when Penguin were not my publishers, and which was for a book that seemed very much to be Penguin’s attempt (desperate attempt?) to produce that ‘desi John Grisham’ by any means.

The book in question sank without a trace, although it got a lot of press at that time – quite natural, considering the author was a famous newsreader.

On a more trivial note, I happened to meet Vikram A. Chandra, the author of the book reviewed below, when I went to NDTV to do my own interview (on Barkha Dutt’s show) during the launch of Prince of Ayodhya in New Delhi.

He was everything I’d expected him to be from his television appearances – very decent, nice, gentle. He mentioned the review, wistfully, and how I’d “torn him apart”. And he did it without leaping at me and trying to strange me, which is proof of how nice a person he really is.

But I’ll still let the review stand as it was first written and published.

Also, now, of course, Penguin are my publishers. And I dish it out to them fairly harshly in this review.

But I’ll let that stand as well.

As for my growing pile of unsubmitted crime thrillers, well, that’s simple: I write first because I love to write.

Correction: live to write.

Publication is something I do only because I need to make a living out of it.

(Although the appreciation of genuine readers is definitely a big motivation too.)

And the other reason is that I’ve barely managed to shrug off the heavy saddle of being “India’s desi Ludlum, Chase, Christie” all rolled into one.

I don’t want to start it up all over again!

So, enjoy the review, and if you have any hidden aspirations to be the Indian Grisham, well, good luck to you!

THE SRINAGAR CONSPIRACY
By Vikram A. Chandra
Penguin India
292 pages paperback; Rs 295

Hubris must be working overtime.

How else do you explain two writers with the same name both producing thrillers set in Kashmir at the same time?

Fortunately for bewildered readers, one Vikram Chandra chose to tell his story in script form in the forthcoming Mission: Kashmir, while this Vikram A. Chandra tells it as a novel.

To clarify the differences further, the first Vikram is the son of a filmi family while the author of the book at hand is the News Editor of NDTV and a familiar face on the nightly Star News broadcasts.

Recently, a fellow Rediff.com columnist Nilanjana S. Roy wrote about Satyajit Ray’s excellent Feluda stories which have been recently collected in a new edition.

She lamented the lack of good crime writers in India, citing the first Chandra mentioned here (the one from the filmi family, not the newsreader) and one other obscure writer as examples.

Well, there have certainly been several Indian crime novelists writing in English that I can think of, including one pioneering chap who produced three in quick succession early in the Nineties.

This novel under review once again raises the question why more Indian crime novels aren’t being written or published.

The answer is that they are being written, they just aren’t being published.

In fact, some very fine crime novels authored by Indian writers are languishing for want of publishers. Perhaps languishing is the wrong word – ignored is more apt.

Because the authors in question, rather than sit on their piles of talent, are simply mailing their manuscripts abroad to agents and publishers, and are finding a far more encouraging response from British and American publishers.

Typical of India, to suffer a brain drain before it realizes the worth of its own local talent.

Why, you wonder? The reason is as old as the history of Indian publishing:

Most Indian editors read only two words of any manuscript submitted. The first and last name of the author.

And if the name is a celebrity, regardless of the profession, then that manuscript is assured a reading and a contract.

That’s why a socialite diva like Shobha De can get her laundry list published in book form – and probably has, for all I know – while a talented yet relatively unknown professional writer can’t even get his or her manuscript read by a commissioning editor.

For that matter, even a reasonably well known writer would have an uphill task getting his or her manuscript read by a major house like HarperCollins or Penguin, simply because the editors there are far too busy reading the creative output of film stars, television stars, models, corporate wives and assorted celebs.

That’s why even a consistent crime novelist like Shashi Warrier is forced to keep shifting publishers with each new crime novel.

If Satyajit Ray were alive and just a young Bengali writer(as he was when he penned the first Feluda stories), instead of being a late, legendary film maker and international celebrity, I’d wager that Indian editors would return his manuscripts unread with the comment: “Try a Bengali publisher”.

On the other hand, a television newsreader with no writing experience or notable talent for the form can pen a novel and expect it to be published as a top-of-the-list book by a major publisher like Penguin. This is the hypocrisy that plagues India publishing.

But Chandra himself (the newsreader not the filmi bloke turned author) can’t be blamed for the childish biases of desi editors.

And who knows, perhaps his endearingly sincere personality did produce a good book after all.

So, to be fair, let’s look at Chandra the newsreader’s novel and give it an honest read.

The Srinagar Conspiracy tells the story of a small group of fictional characters caught up in the historic turmoil of Kashmir.

The bracketing plot is a suspense thriller set in present-day Srinagar – the conspiracy of the title – and aims for the die-hard political-action-suspense genre that Tom Clancy excels in.

While the suspense revolves around the enactment of the present-day conspiracy, the bulk of the novel spans the period from Partition to the present day, at times dipping even further into the past for brief history lessons.

The fictional protagonists are, predictably, a young Kashmiri Pundit, Vijay Kaul, and his Muslim friend Habib Shah.

Their idyllic growing up years and friendship end suddenly in a blaze of flames when the ugly spectre of militancy rears its head.

There’s romance in the form of a beautiful Muslim girl Yasmin.

And sympathetic villainry in the form of Jalauddin, an Afghan mujahideen weaned on the outrages of the Soviet army in his native land.

Jalauddin is the negative force that impels the narrative forward, and the parts where he isn’t on the page seem to suffer from his absence.

Throughout the book, the real plays out alongside the fictional. Chandra recreates events like the Rubaiya Syed kidnapping, Char-e-Sharief occupation, and several others with a methodical professionalism that almost suggests a publisher’s outline listing ‘historical events to be included in the novel’.

Chandra’s writing is professional to a fault; like that other desi thriller writer Shashi Warrier, his style is cut-and-dried to the point of sterility. Neither does he involve us emotionally in the lives of the people affected by the militancy, nor does he make us care enough for the militants themselves.

The result is a curiously detached and objective tone of voice, almost like a business news report on a dull day at the Sensex. You could almost visualize Chandra reading the entire narrative out on the news at nine, with accompanying visual clips and comments by experts.

Having said that, The Srinagar Conspiracy is a clean, professionally written thriller. There’s no excess of anything in this book, neither violence nor sex, nor suspense nor thrills.

This isn’t one that’ll keep you up at nights, nor does it come close to capturing the trauma, angst and terror of contemporary Kashmir.

But if you’re looking at a potted history of militancy in Kashmir – clearly taken in great dollops from books like Manoj Joshi’s The Lost Rebellion and Tavleen Singh’s Kashmir: A Tragedy of Errors, then you’ll find this a painless history pill to swallow.

If that’s what Penguin Books and Chandra had in mind when producing this book, it works well enough.

If they thought they were creating a gripping, nail-biting, edge-of-the-seat suspense thriller, they clearly don’t know their genre.

Or their job.