Vengeance of Ravana: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series – on the path to publication
This is the almost final cover design for the Penguin India edition of VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana. I’m posting it here along with some good news. The first is that I have finally resolved the textual issues I had with the manuscripts of VoR and SoS and as a result I’ve finally (finally-finally-finally!) decided that both books ought to be published. This means that the series will end at eight books, not six or seven, and that I have finally been able to deal with the Sita banishment issue in a manner with which I feel satisfied. It’s only taken me six years – which is longer than it took me to write the first six books in the series! But it’s done. VoR will be released in a mass market edition by Penguin in a few months, followed within three months by the mass market edition of SoS. I’ll confirm publication dates once Penguin informs me of the same.
For those of you – “you few, you happy few!” – who’ve bought and read the exclusive limited signed AKB BOOKS edition of VoR and have ordered the exclusive limited signed AKB BOOKS edition of SoS, this may not be reason to jump up and down, which is bad for your joints anyway. But for the vast majority of Ramayana Series readers out there, I’m sure you will be happy to see why I chose to rescind my own earlier decision to end the series at six books and chose to continue it in these two additional volumes. I can’t promise that the answers I provide in these two books will please everyone. Indeed, they may please no one. Because the point of writing these books is not to please or displease, it’s simply to complete the mental journey I embarked upon when I began writing Prince of Ayodhya and finished that first book way back in the year 2000, long before any publisher was willing to even look at such a manuscript, let alone publish it. Today, I have journalists, readers, editors, booksellers, publishers and others who keep writing to me and telling me that I’m responsible for a wave of resurgence in Indian mythology. I really don’t give a damn about any resurgence or the commercial ramifications of making mythology “cool” as one editor put it. What I do care about is the wealth of great Indian literature that has been ignored by the world for so long in favour of other mythologies and legends of the western hemisphere and that deserves a wider readership and exposure.
As I’ve always said to anyone who praised me for the series: This is not about me. It’s not my story alone. It’s our story. Our history in fact. I’m proud and happy to have been the one to retell it in my humble and flawed attempt. But I’m not anyone special or talented for having done it, just a product of a great culture and people that share one of the world’s finest storytelling traditions. In my opinion, the finest.
SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis – Book your copy now!
Courtesy of designer Pinaki De and Editor Saugata Mukherjee, here are two sneak peaks of the almost-final cover design of the Harper edition of SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis, published by HarperCollins India. It will be available in all Indian bookstores in September. If you want the AKB Books Signed Limited Edition Hardcover, all you have to do is fill up the AKB Books Request Form to book your copy. (No advance payment required.)
Sons of Sita, Slayer of Kamsa, Dance of Govinda…and Mba: Book 1
Update: Corrected from 5 to 4 titles based on availability.
Just a reminder to use the AKB Books Request Form to book your limited signed copies of the above titles. This particular list of my next 4 titles will stay online until 31st August 2010. After that, a new list will be put up which will be valid for the next three or four months. And so on. Due to the number of my published titles and the high demand, I am not able to offer signed copies of previous books at present, just the titles listed above. Each of these will be limited signed (but not personalized) editions and once this limited stock is over, these titles will not be available again! So book your signed copy now and don’t miss your chance to be one of very few readers worldwide to own one!
And in case you were wondering, it doesn’t cost you a rupee (or even a paisa) to book these copies! 
You can’t take a goldfish for a walk
The car radio was tuned to 107.1 FM. The song playing was How Much Is That Doggie In The Window? (The line “you can’t take a goldfish for a walk” is from the same song.) The song after that was The Butterfly and The Dog, which I’m not familiar with but was nice too. I like listening to 107.1 FM in the mornings when I’m driving because it’s the last surviving FM channel that plays English music. I like Hindi music as much as the next person, but listening to the same dozen or two dozen Bollywood songs being replayed all day long on every FM channel, with endless ad breaks, is not my idea of listening to music. It’s just being used as a consumer, is all. The whole point of radio is the unpredictability of song choice, not knowing which track will come next, and of the simple pleasure of hearing an oldie but goldie, or a newbie but goodie, suddenly coming at you while you’re driving and thinking of other things. Good radio is what happens to you when you’re busy doing other things, like driving, or walking the dog, or just sitting in the car and looking out at a mangrove swamp on a rainy day in Mumbai.
And that’s the mangrove swamp in question. It’s pretty clean right now, thanks to the monsoons. You can’t see the ducks but they’re there somewhere, probably huddled under an overhanging tree. There are cranes and storks and kingfishers and birds I would need all my Salim Ali books to put a name to, though there seem to be a lot fewer each passing year and those that do appear deserve some kind of medal for braving the oil spills, oilfield blazes, and super-heat from the superweaponry ordnance deployed in all those wars against Terror. I’m just glad to see them, and to see the mangroves. Which, by the way, are also slowly losing the battle of attrition to the forces of forced urbanization. In this pic, for instance, I’m parked on a side road which should not be there and which leads to an electrical substation or distribution station or somesuch which as far as I know, ought not to be there either. It’s now got a small colony of squatters around it who presumably work for the substation but are nevertheless squatting on CRZ land. And there’s even a small mandir here, with loads and loads of trash around that never seems to get cleared. Oh, and right across the way is the local dump, where dump trucks dump trash by the hundreds of truckloads each day, right in the heart of the “protected” mangrove lands. I’m sure it’s all perfectly legal, but it’s not I who matter, it’s those birds and those ducks and I don’t think they’re interested in urbanization. Not much.
Willow. A little wet but no worse for wear. Missing her walk. But also content to sit and listen to the radio – which incidentally happens to be playing How Much Is That Doggie In The Window at the exact moment this pic was taken on my iPhone, and enjoy the cool a/c air. But the window stays open always, no matter what. Oh well. Calf leather is replaceable. Willow isn’t.
And when the rain let up a little, she did get to walk a bit. Just around the car, which is good too, because what she really enjoys is sniffing and snuffling. The walking is only a means to the end, and the end that matters is the end of her long nose. She’s too busy sniffing in this pic to pose properly which is fine because she’s definitely not a Page 3 dog. Thank dog for that. The bench appears to have been sponsored by an industrialist in memory of his late wife or maybe it was his mother, I forget which. Interestingly, I’ve actually met the industrialist in question a long time ago – he was a client for an ad agency I used to work with back then in another life. His industrial complex was near Kochi and I flew down several times in the mid and late 80s to get briefed on brochures, corporate campaigns, vacancy ads – and even the ads commemorating the person to whom the bench in the pic is dedicated. Small world. Nice bench. Next time I’ll try pressing it a few times just so I can tell my trainer at the gym that I’ve already done my bench-presses that day. If he doesn’t believe me, I’ll show him this picture. Oh wait. I don’t have a trainer. Just the bench.
One for The Road
When any commercial publishing category or genre becomes as ubiquitous as the word ubiquitous itself, it’s time to deal it a swift kick-in-the-nuts send-up. What better way to do it than by satirizing the work itself? This being the year, if not the millennium of the post-apocalyptic epic EOW (End of World) thriller, it’s a particularly good time to pull down the shorts on some of the genre’s bigger successes. Now, I’m actually a great fan of Cormac McCarthy, and he’s about as far from the cash-in-on-the-bandwagon kind of author as you can possibly get. But Jacob Lambert‘s hilarious send-up of McCarthy’s brilliant post-apocalyptic novel The Road on the literary blog The Millions is to die for. Check out this excerpt:
An hour later they were on The Road, an Oprah’s Book Club selection. He pushed the cart and both he and the boy carried knapsacks in case they had to make a run for it. Cannibal rapists, roving bloodcults. Greenpeace volunteers. In the knapsacks were essential things: tins of food, metal utensils, a broken Slinky, a canopener, three bullets, a picture of ham. He looked out over the barren waste, the scorpled remain. The road was empty, as was its wont. Quiet, moveless. Are you okay? he said, quotation marks dead as the reeds. The boy nodded. Then they started down the road, humming a sprightly tune. The tune was silent, and unsprightly.
Read the complete spoof of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road at The Millions.
Dancing with Govinda, Slaying with Krishna
And, coming close on the heels of the glowing praise from Chiki Sarkar of Random House India after completing work on my first major non-fiction book The Valmiki Syndrome, here’s another outpouring of compliments from Saugata Mukherjee, my editor at HarperCollins India who will be publishing SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis, my retelling of the life and adventures of Krishna and also a companion series to my Mba. Saugata sent me a very warmly worded email after reading the final draft of DANCE OF GOVINDA: Book 2 of The Krishna Coriolis recently. I’ve only edited out the other business-related matters, but didn’t need to edit a single word or phrase of negative comment on the two books – because there were none!
Spent most of last evening reading this – it’s got everything in equal measure to make it a blockbuster! It’s simply unputdownable (probably also because I am at the end of the KAMSA edits) and I can see you’ll probably lead a whole new generation of readers into mythologies but in a cool, contemporary way. Also, on the other hand, I feel SLAYER will in many ways bring back a lot of AB (not the grand oldman of Bollywood!) lovers – it’s a perfect first book for a series like KRISHNA…there’s hardly much I can do to enhance the readability of the book, since it is quite beautifully written.
A Note From The Editor
The above came to me with gifts of free books, including a lovely limited edition hardcover of a Murakami novel, from my Editor at Random House India, Chiki Sarkar, on completion of the editing of my first major non-fiction book The Valmiki Syndrome. I guess this means she likes it!
Dear Ashok,
A small gift to show my appreciation. It’s been a really great experience working with you and you’ve been a dream to edit.
Wish best wishes,
Chiki
July 10, New Delhi
News and Updates: The latest from the Bankerverse (again)
As with the last update on 11th June, those of you who’ve been keeping tabs on the right-hand News & Updates column may not find many surprises here. But there was one important announcement that wasn’t in that last update and a couple of minor ones, so here goes…
Waiting eagerly for my next books? Book your copies now!
AKB Books, the limited signed editions of a few select titles of my work, available exclusively via this website, are all currently sold out. However, if you wish to ensure your copy of any forthcoming AKB Books title, all you have to do is fill in the Request Form to book your copies! Don’t worry about payment – you will be contacted once the book is available and informed of the necessary details.
AKB MBA is on its way at last!
After all the ups and downs of the past several months (and years), I have finally found a way to share my Mahabharata retelling with all those of you interested in reading it. No, it still won’t be mass published and distributed in bookstores worldwide – I’ve already explained earlier why that isn’t likely to happen anytime soon – but it will be available from this website in a few months, before the end of this year. If you wish to ensure your copy, please fill in the Request Form now, and keep in touch with this website from time to time.
THE VALMIKI SYNDROME
Next in line for publication is THE VALMIKI SYNDROME, my first major non-fiction book being published by Random House India in a few months. As mentioned earlier, I have chosen not to offer any sneak peeks, previews or sample chapters from this book, unlike all my earlier titles. In fact, I’m not saying a word about this book until it’s released! You’ll just have to wait and see what it’s about.
SLAYER OF KAMSA
As outlined in my Epic India Library plan, my Mba Series will run in parallel with the Krishna Coriolis. While my Mba will be available exclusively via this website, the Krishna Coriolis series will be on bookshelves across India, thanks to HarperCollins India, the publishers! The first book, SLAYER OF KAMSA, will be out in stores before the end of 2010. The series is an action-packed retelling of the life and adventures of Lord Krishna from before his birth until after his death on the mortal plane, written in a narrative style suitable for Young Adult readers. The Krishna books will be much shorter than the Ramayana Series books and written in a far more compact and thrilling narrative style. SLAYER OF KAMSA will be followed soon after by DANCE OF GOVINDA. These first two books in the series will follow Krishna’s story from before his birth until the day he confronts and kills Kamsa. I’ll post excerpts as well as the cover design here sometime in August. So don’t forget to check back!
SONS OF SITA
Delayed but not forgotten! My seemingly interminable revisions are finally approaching an end. As I’ve mentioned earlier, after considerable thought, I decided to cancel mass market publication of Vengeance of Ravana, extract a substantial portion of that book (VoR) and add it to the manuscript of SoS. That required a fair amount of revision and rewriting, hence the delay. Many of you have pre-ordered copies of SoS and have been waiting eagerly for them. Once again, apologies for the delay and thanks for your patience. SONS OF SITA will be available in its signed limited AKB Books Edition in August. For those of you who have been asking, there will be a few copies of VENGEANCE OF RAVANA also available. Please note that I’m unable to inform each person individually by email, so you will have to keep in touch with this website for further updates.
PRINCE OF AYODHYA, the Graphic Novel
The first volume of my long-awaited graphic novel adaptation of my Ramayana Series, written by me and illustrated by Argentinian artist Enrique (Quique) Alcatena is ready to enter the publication pipeline. Those of you who have seen sample artwork from this comic or have been following its development for the past several years will be aware how much work and patience has gone into its creation. I will confirm publication dates in a month or two, once I know for sure.
TEN KINGS
My first historical battle epic, TEN KINGS based on the Dasarajna incident in the Rig Veda, has been bought by new imprint Amaryllis Books in a very good deal. Thanks to Jay and Priya of Jacaranda, and Sanjana Roy Choudhury, Chief Editor of Amaryllis! TEN KINGS will also be my first book published in Hindi and other Indian languages. The book is currently scheduled for mass market publication in January 2011. If you thought my Ramayana Series was good, and if you think my Krishna books are action-packed and fast-paced, then just wait until you read TEN KINGS. It’s by far my best book ever. A great story, a magnificent battle epic, and a historic saga of the founding of the Bharata nation.
THE KALI QUARTET
A BLOOD RED SAREE opens my first contemporary fiction series, The Kali Quartet. This is a global thriller featuring three strong women protagonists who are caught up in a major financial conspiracy involving financial institutions secretly profiting from human trafficking. This is likely to be my next internationally published series as well and currently, my agents are fielding offers from Indian publishers for subcontinental rights. I’ll update when I know more, but look at this as my next major work for the next few years, now that my Ramayana Series, Mba, Krishna Series are all complete and in the publication pipeline. It’s also, in my humble opinion, my best work ever!
More news and updates every month from now on…
Swing Shift in New York Publishing – dancing from Editor to Editor
Author Susan Orlean’s Free Range column in The New Yorker this week is about her experiences with changing editors on her first book. I wasn’t surprised to see how similar it was to my own experience – albeit on a much lesser scale. (I only went through about five editors, not the full alphabet like she did.)
Apparently it’s gotten so bad that most editors don’t have the time to edit anymore – their days are spent trying to buy books they want to publish, overseeing books they’ve bought earlier through the complex process of corporate publishing, making sure the books get promoted right, promoted well, distributed well, get shelved right, etc, etc. Everything but actual editing, in short.
You can see from the comments on the New Yorker page that authors in the US have actually begun to live with the fact and even edit one another’s manuscripts now – at least that way, there’s continuity in the editing process.
Fortunately for us, it’s not like that in India – at least not yet. Here, editors at most publishing houses (though not all, mind you) still edit manuscripts, talk to authors about their books in progress and actually play an active part in the process of creating a published work. However, it’s rapidly changing here as well, particularly at the multinational publishing houses where quantity is winning out over quality and foreign authors (even those from neighbouring nations) are given disproportionate amounts of time, attention, promotional spending and other support. Most Indian authors have virtually no say at any stage of the publication process – and many are not even informed when their books are published. The first (and only) inkling many authors get that they’ve been published is when they receive a few complimentary copies of their own book. That is also often the last they hear from the publisher.
Sadly, that remains the same for authors everywhere.
This is a true story:
My first book was acquired by two people I will call Editor A and Editor B, who ran a small imprint at a big publishing house. We had a great lunch to celebrate. A few months later, Editor A left book publishing to become a newspaper writer. Editor B became my primary editor. She and I had a nice lunch to talk about my book.
A few months after that, Editor B was promoted to publisher of the larger house—let us call it Publisher W—that owned the small imprint. Because Editor B—that is, Editor/Publisher B—now had too many duties to edit my book, I was assigned to Editor C.
Editor C and I had lunch. A few months later, he got a new job at another publishing house. I was assigned to Editor D.
Editor D and I had lunch. It was a pleasant-enough lunch, but Editor D had no actual interest in my book or me; he was just taking it on because Editor/Publisher B, now his boss, had asked him to.
A few months later, Editor/Publisher B was fired.
Click here to read Susan Orlean’s column in New Yorker this week.
Everybody Wants To Have A Bath – singing in the Mumbai rains
Pouring here in Mumbai. Our driver’s gone to his home town to see to his mother who is seriously ill, possibly terminal. So I’m the designated morning driver for my wife and daughter, neither of whom drive even though they have their own cars. My son drives himself in his own car but he sleeps in late and I’m up early anyway, and I walk Willow anyway, so I like dropping Biki and Yashka off. Biki gets dropped to the pre-school where she works. She loves her job, brings it home and spends weekends and nights making up teacher’s aids and charts and stuff. The house is always full of clay models, piles and piles of coloured chart paper cut into a variety of shapes – stars, squares, circles, crescent moons seem to ‘top the charts’ so to speak – and it’s like living in a pre-school sometimes which is nice.
Anyway, back to the rain. It was pouring lawyers and engineers today. That’s my way of describing it, because somehow the image of cats and dogs falling from the sky doesn’t appeal to me. I love cats and dogs – all animals in fact. They seem to love me too. I constantly get mobbed by strays, partly because Willow’s smell is all over me, I guess, but also because I’m gentle to a fault and they seem to sense that. A strange thing happens when I drive. Dogs and cats tend to cross the street in front of my car, often so slowly and leisurely that if it were anyone else driving, they would surely get run over, or at least get their tails squished. I always stop, slow down, or honk if there’s no alternative. Cats in particular tend to swish their tails, waggle their furry asses, and stroll aaram se across the front of my car like they’re VVIPs and I’m at a red signal. I can’t tell you how often this happens to me.
Birds tend to hang around my windows. I do have a sort of ability to whistle in imitation of bird sounds – not too many, just a couple. But that can’t be the only reason. Yet, you will find several species of bird hanging around on my window grilles, tweeting, chirping or issuing bird songs in full throttle. Willow doesn’t like that much; I think she gets jealous. She gets hugely jealous of cats purring and rubbing up to me, and she only tolerates other dogs doing it because I make sure to include her in the petting and talking, and because she’s such a friendly soul herself. She’s never bitten nor will ever bite anyone in her life; though she’s been bitten once by a stray and been threatened or come under attack any number of times. It’s the downside of being a gentle person or animal – you get attacked a lot. How to deal with it? Run away? Well, yes, sometimes. At other times, it helps to just stand your ground and let them know you will not be bullied. If that means having a chunk or two bitten out of you, so be it. But we shall not bite back. (We do bark a lot though, both Willow and I.)
There were no dogs attacking us today. In fact, the dead end lane where we walked this morning, after dropping Bithika to her pre-school and before dropping Yashka to the station, was deserted. We left the car and walked to the end of the lane – and of course, it picked that time to start pouring. Really pouring. Willow continued to wander around. The rain doesn’t bother her much. But I had to take shelter under a tree though I got soaked anyway. She got soaked too and after realizing I wasn’t perambulating with her as usual, she wanted to come stand by me as well. We stood there under the tree, watching the rain fall for a while. It was very nice. There’s a Mumbai Metro development going on over there in that lane and it used to be a big open lot before where we used to play. We miss it a lot. There’s a tree which I’ve clicked on several occasions and which figures prominently in some of my favourite pics in my series titled ‘Under A Mumbai Sky’. The tree is still there but the lot is fenced off and closed to the public. Now only big machines live there, grinding and groaning and gnashing all day long as they continue the business of turning the city into a metropolis. I wonder if Willow misses that patch of open ground and open sky – so rare in this city, as it is. I think she does. But she accepts it for what it is: change. Progress. The way of the world. Perhaps I should accept it too. I’ll try.
We stood beneath the tree in the rain for a while – I took a couple of pictures which I’ve posted here, though they don’t really capture the sheer quantum of fluid being deposited, and then we mutually decided to make a dash for the car. Willow loved it. Running in the rain – and me running? It made her day. As a hound, she has a tendency to ‘bell’. That’s when a dog weaves in and out of your feet, brushes against your legs, and follows an irregular pattern that keeps her (or him) moving forward but also in constant touch with the human, or with other dogs. It basically amounts to bumping against one another while running. It’s difficult to coordinate for most people and you can get knocked down or worse if you’re not prepared for it. I am. I was. And we ran well together. Me with my overweight flat-footed thumping and she with her graceful weaving leap, red fur rippling. Reaching the car was a kind of reward. She rubbed herself madly all over the calf leather seats trying to dry herself. I turned the a/c to the heating mode and she liked that a little though it unnerved her a bit because she’s terrified of hair dryers and a car heater is a lot like a hair dryer. But she liked the warmth. We were cold and soaking wet and the song playing on 107.1 AIR FM was Tears For Fears’ “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”. Except I don’t like the capitalist imperialistic subtext of that statement, so I changed the words to “Everybody Wants To Have a Bath”. Which was much more appropriate. I wished I’d carried Willow’s medicated shampoo. She was due for a bath anyday anyway. Oh well. Maybe tomorrow.
That was my early morning. It’s almost 9 now and I’m at my desk about to start writing for the day. How was your morning? As good as mine, I hope. Work well. Be well. Have a great day.
PS: The pics are terrible. The iPhone was wet and slippery and I didn’t want to get wetter to get better angles (there’s an awkward sentence construction). But then again, I’m no photographer nor do I aspire to be one.
A BLOOD RED SAREE – Book 1 of The Kali Quartet
This is an earlier post (from May) which I’m reproducing here as this is going to be my next major publication after TEN KINGS. As I write these words, at least two major publishers are in negotiations with my agents to purchase publishing rights to The Kali Quartet. It will be at least a week or two, possibly even several weeks, before I’m able to confirm which publisher and roughly when the first book, A BLOOD RED SAREE, will be released. But for the moment, I thought these brief notes would help keep you informed about this, perhaps my most ambitious contemporary fiction series ever.
Some of you have been writing in asking me about The Kali Quartet. Some have assumed it’s another mythological epic like my Ramayana Series. I thought I would set your minds at rest and tell you a little about this upcoming project.
For one thing, The Kali Quartet has nothing to do with the Ramayana Series or mythology. The ‘Kali’ reference is just that, a reference. The story is completely contemporary.
So without further ado, here’s a short note on The Kali Quartet and the first book in the four-ology, A BLOOD RED SAREE.
The Kali Quartet by Ashok Banker
A BLOOD RED SAREE
THE BURNING SAFFRON SKY
THE AGE OF KALI
THE COLOUR OF RAIN
A Blood Red Saree
- Synopsis
Three abused women unite under the guidance of a mysterious American benefactor to battle a powerful conglomerate profiting from the trafficking of women and children.
An international conglomerate of financial masterminds is secretly funding human trafficking and passing off the multi-billion dollar profits as a legitimate international investment opportunity.
Can three ordinary women stop this barbaric conspiracy of profit? They are not alone in their fight for justice. A powerful caucus of wealthy high-placed women in Washington DC led by the First Lady herself meet in the White House to pledge to end this despicable business. With financial aid and secret information from these anonymous benefactors, the three women form a Trimurti, a sacred troika.
Now, the battle is on as each of them uses her considerable skills and determination to attack on a number of fronts: legal, financial, and when all else fails, through violent confrontation.
One will not survive, the other two will face brutal opposition and immense challenges. Like three aspects of the Eternal Goddess KALI herself, they risk their lives and loves in a struggle to the death.
Each volume of THE KALI QUARTET is complete in itself, while forming a section of the larger story. Read consecutively, this is one epic thriller in four volumes.
- Series Synopsis
Sheila Ray: daughter of a disgraced dead police officer, she’s finally put her traumatic childhood behind her to establish the first successful women’s gym in Kolkata. When she protects a pair of persecuted lesbian Olympic women boxers from a vengeful politician, she finds herself literally under fire and on the run both from the powerful forces running the Maoist insurgency in India, as well as the Government and police.
Nachiketa Shroff: her ex-husband and his family’s attempt to kill her for not bringing a dowry for her arranged marriage put her in a wheelchair for life; after using the law to destroy them financially, she now runs her own NGO offering free legal representation to battered Indian women. But when her office burns down, destroying a decade’s work and almost killing her (again), she knows it’s time to step up the activism and go after the people at the top of the pyramid of exploitation.
Anita B: The first Indian woman private investigator, unabashed lesbian and LTBG activist, she returns home to Kerala to attend the funeral of her childhood best friend and runs smack into a cobra’s nest of trouble. Not only was her friend murdered for opposing the development of a major five star tourist resort but Anita’s own misogynist brothers are part of a ring of child traffickers using a Christian mission and orphanage as a cover.
Three women, each of whom has been abused by men in different ways and has built a life and reputation designed to help other women from similar abuse, are unwittingly drawn into a web of international human traffickers. Working alone at first, each discovers a different face of the hydra-headed monster that is modern-day slavery. Their individual quests for justice and survival lead them up to the top of the pyramid of power, where they discover a terrible secret. An international conglomerate of financial masterminds – bankers, insurance executives, fund managers – who are secretly funding illegitimate activities such as the enslaving of women and children in the third world, drug trafficking and even terrorism, and then whitewashing the multi-billion dollar profits under the guise of a legitimate international investment opportunity!
The stakes are phenomenally high, the parties involved are the Who’s Who of the financial and political world, and their resources immensely powerful. What can three women do to stop this barbaric conspiracy of profit?
But they are not alone in their fight for justice. An equally powerful caucus of wealthy high-placed women in Washington, DC, led by the First Lady herself, meet in the White House to pledge to end this despicable business. With financial aid and secret information from these anonymous benefactors, the three women are able to form a Trimurti, a sacred troika, and unite together.
Now, the battle is on as each of them uses her considerable skills and determination to fight the forces of unbridled profit by attacking on a number of fronts: legal, financial, and when all else fails, through violent confrontation.
Like three aspects of the Eternal Goddess KALI herself, they risk their lives and loves in a struggle to the finish. One will not survive, the other two will face brutal opposition and immense challenges. But at the end, they will triumph and succeed in substantially crippling the enterprise and as importantly, exposing it to the world at large.
About a script
Feedback from the friend of a well-known film director who bought my first original screenplay, which he intends to make in the coming year or two. It’s an English-language script, based on an original story by me, with screenplay and dialogues by me as well. I say “English-language” but there are scenes in Arabic, Aramaic, Pali, Sanskrit and Urdu as well. The setting is mainly the USA, partly the Middle East and a bit is set in India. The major characters are all American – by which I mean actual ‘white’ Caucasian Americans – and it is not a “Bollywood” film in any sense of the word. It is an American film with an Indian heart that just happens to be written by an Indian writer. This is what my director’s friend had to say:
You have a mammoth & exciting task ahead of you!! This script is EPIC, violent, sexy, beautiful, soulful. Covering not only the biggest journey of all, that of self discovery & enlightenment but the sub themes of brotherhood, politics & religion, the war on the Middle East, paralleling the war inside. The state of the US GOVT, global racial tensions & the way each one sees the other, not to mention US internal racial tensions & the prolonged black & white racial conflicts, the global effect the US conglomorate has on the world at large-socio economically speaking, their role in facilitating & funding several wars. The notion of family, of attachment, the questions of destiny, choice, debt & Karma. The idea of perception & how we see things. Rich versus poor, money, Power, Sex, the rich mans drug, coke etc.. The poor mans drug, religion! Dying for a cause, living for a cause. Money, Greed, the arms race, corruption on a national level! Love, Lust, Animal & Human nature. LORD! You name it, it is in this script!! Intense & INCREDIBLY action packed, perhaps too much at times & I believe it to be lacking certain things & prolonging others unnecessarilly. Needs to be cut back & modified in a few ways in my opinion. It tends to forget its own purpose, the journey of itself. Incredibly beautiful imagery, parallels in story & the way each scene links up. So well written & so, so clever in its scene set ups & drama! Amazing job just needs reeling in & editing. Oh & the scenes with the woman need to be worked on!! A few scenes I would toss. I’ll tell you scene by scene & be more specific when I see you.
TEN KINGS: The historic battle that founded the Bharata nation
The 7th Mandala of the Rig Veda (quoted above) tells us of a great and terrible war called Dasarajna: The Battle of Ten Kings. In that legendary conflict, ten major tribal chiefs (kings) of the ancient world sought to displace and destroy Raja Sudas of the Bharata tribe.
The ten kings were supported by numerous individual champions and smaller forces, and were instigated by the great seer Vishwamitra. Many of them were allies of Raja Sudas and traded with the Bharatas and were friendly with them. But that fateful day, they turned against Sudas and his small but strong tribe of Bharatas, surrounded them with forces so superior that Sudas could have no chance of survival.
Their intention was to destroy Sudas and the Bharatas, take them as dasyas (slaves) and divide the Bharata lands and possessions as spoils of war. One day, out of the blue, their great army assembled on the banks of the Parusni river (present day Ravi in the Punjab region) and challenged Raja Sudas.
Vastly outnumbered, outmatched, and outplanned, Sudas should logically have surrendered. But he knew he had done nothing wrong, and being a righteous king, with the support of his people who loved him and respected his leadership, kindness and generosity, he chose to fight.
He was also supported by the spiritual mentorship of his guru, the legendary Vashishta.
And so, upon a stormy day by the banks of the Ravi, the battle was fought.
Legend tells us that in fact, Sudas might well have been Raja Bharat himself, son of Dushyant and Shakuntala, grandson of Vishwamitra.
The Rig Veda tells us that against all odds, Raja Sudas of the Bharatas (hence Bharata-Raja) fought that day against the Ten Kings…and won. The battle was impossible, the victory a miracle. The Rig Veda also tells us that the devas themselves watched from above as the battle progressed, and due to the moral superiority of Raja Sudas, Lord Indra chose to support the Bharatas.
Not only did Sudas and the Bharatas win, they routed the enemy in a massacre that was aided by nature itself, when the river and weather came to their aid. Was it Indra himself or merely a brilliant battle strategy by Raja Sudas? Either way, the Bharatas won the day. And as a result they became the dominant tribe of the Indian sub-continent.
Later, Raja Sudas’s descendants split into the Puru and Kuru lines, and waged another great war for Arya supremacy: the Mahabharata yuddh.
In a way, DASARAJNA (Battle of Ten Kings) was the turning point in the itihasa of the sub-continent.
Because it was by winning that war that King Sudas Bharata established his tribe as the ruling tribe of this part of the world.
And it is in his honour that all people of the sub-continent came to be known in time as Bharatas.
That story has never been before been told in all its glorious detail. Indeed, while the Rig Veda tells us some details of the war and its aftermath, very little is known about why the war began, how it became inevitable, and so on.
It’s a rousing tale filled with intrigues, conspiracies, back-stabbing, fierce erotic encounters, brutal court politics, family conflicts, and race against time in the hours before the battle. All the enemies and allies who will face one another on the battlefield are seen in the first half of the novel, playing their shrewd politics and pretenses in the court of Raja Sudas, pretending to be his allies, his friends, his neighbours, well-wishers, advisers, while secretly plotting and preparing to go to war against him. The reason they do this is because they intend to destroy his kingdom from within first – and if that fails, their armies are already assembled and waiting at the boundary of his kingdom, ready to invade. And as the story progresses and Sudas stands firm to his principles – his dharma – they all desert him, one by one, and go to join the other side, until finally Ten Kings stand against him, outnumbering his force more than ten times.
Leading and instigating them is Anu, the longtime arch-enemy of Sudas and the Bharatas, and Anu’s spiritual adviser, none other than the legendary brahmarishi Vishwamitra (of Ramayana fame). Vishwamitra has an old history of enmity with Sudas’ own adviser, Vashishta, and has an axe to grind by instigating this attack on Sudas and the Bharatas.
DASARAJNA is based on events described in the Rig Veda and confirmed by historians and archaelogists as being a true story. It is the seminal tale of the great battle that established the Bharata nation in the sub-continent which is present day India.
TEN KINGS will be published in English and Indian languages by Amaryllis Books, an imprint of Manjul Publishing, in early 2011.
Request A Book
Hi. As requested by several of you, I’ve created a Request A Book page where you can fill in your details and book a copy of any of the forthcoming AKB BOOKS Limited Editions.
The best thing about it is that you don’t need to pay in advance to place a request. That’s why it’s called a Request and not an Order. Even if you already have my bank details, please DO NOT pay or transfer money for any book. That’s why I haven’t mentioned any prices either.
Once each book is printed and copies are ready to despatch, you will be contacted and informed of all necessary details such as price, etc. At that point, you can choose whether to buy it or not, change your delivery details, ask for more than one copy, etc.
Unlike previous AKB BOOKS, these titles will NOT be personalized. That means that when I sign each copy, I will not be able to address it to you or anyone else by name. It will only be signed by me.
Right now, all you need to do is fill up the Request Form, providing all the details correctly as of this point in time, and selecting the titles you are interested in getting – you can always change your mind and details later. This form is just a way to Book your copy of each of these AKB BOOKS Limited Editions so I know roughly how many copies of each one to order from the printer.
And you don’t actually have to pay even a rupee in advance!
Isn’t that cool? Well, what are you waiting for then? Go for it!
Mba: The Limited Edition – okay, let’s do it!
Thanks to one of those extraordinary events that nobody can predict, the situation with my Mba has changed. I’m not going to explain what happened and go into details here, but let’s just say it’s completely unexpected and out of the blue. In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have guessed this would happen and the fact that it did is probably the exception rather than the rule.
First the not-so-good news. This doesn’t change the situation completely. I still don’t know if or when the series will be published in the mass market. Probably never. So those of you who have been voting to buy copies after they’re available in bookstores – or even to buy the full series once it’s in bookstores – you’re not likely to get that chance.
But for those of you who have voted (and are still voting) to pre-order a copy or buy it once it’s available here from AKB Books, well, this news is meant for you all! In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that all those who voted for Option 1 in the poll – you are the ones who gave me the motivation to do this. If you’re so eager and willing to pay to get the AKB Mba in hand, then I’m willing to bring it out in a limited AKB Books edition. It won’t find the much larger audience that it probably deserves (in my humble opinion) but at least it will reach those who want it the most.
In fact, you guys are willing to pay in advance and pre-order it, but I’m not going to ask you to do that. It’s enough that you’re willing to order it online and that there are enough of you who do for me to issue it in this limited edition for you. There will be no pre-orders or advance bookings as I’ve experienced too many delays and put you through too many postponed deadlines already. This time, I’ll wait until I have the printed copies in hand, and then offer it for sale via this website.
The good news is that I will be accepting all major credit cards as well as direct bank transfers and payment via cash deposit. There will be only a limited number of copies and each volume of the series will be available for a limited time only. But at least it will be available in this way. The limited number of copies means that you will need to place your order at the right time and make the payment promptly.
I don’t have a definite date for the release of volume one yet. But I’m hoping to be able to offer it by November or December this year. That means that copies will be ready to order in November of December 2010 and are likely to sell out within a few days of opening orders. It could even be sooner, it’s possible.
Due to the limited number of copies I’m able to offer this way, and the presumably large number of readers who would be interested, I’ll be giving first priority to those who have ordered books issued under my AKB Books imprint already. I already have your email addresses and will be emailing you closer to the release date. But mainly I’ll be using this website to post the information and so I’d request you to kindly keep in touch and visit here as often as possible.
This is official and confirmed by me – the first book of Mba will be printed sometime before the end of 2010 and will be available in a limited edition exclusively via this website. It will not be available in bookstores anywhere. I can’t confirm about overseas orders just yet but they’re highly unlikely. If I’m able to offer them, they will be at a high price, I’m afraid, as the bookstore had serious issues despatching boooks via postal service earlier. The only option would be courier and that would cost far more than the cost of the book itself.
I’m also able to confirm that the Krishna Coriolis will be published in full – all 8 volumes, not just the first two. And that, as planned, it will run in parallel to the Mba series. Ideally, both should be read together since the Krishna Coriolis is actually the Harivamsha section of the Mahabharata, split into a separate series by me because the main Mba was getting too massive already.
And finally, the Mba books offered via AKB Books will be more expensive than regular mass market books that you find in your local bookstore. That’s the price of a limited edition.
So to sum up:
1. AKB Mba will be published after all – but only in a limited edition available directly via this website.
2. There will be no pre-orders or advance bookings and payment. Payment will be accepted only once the book is ready for immediate despatch.
3. The first volume should be printed by November or December 2010.
4. Keep in touch regularly with this website – it’s the only way to be sure you know when the first book of the Mba is out, and the only way you can order a copy.
5. Due to the limited print run, only one copy per order will be despatched and once the print run is sold out, it will not be reprinted – that will be the first and last edition issued by AKB Books, truly Limited Collector’s editions.
I guess you should know that by doing this, I will lose money. A lot of it. The higher price per copy won’t make a great difference – the reason for the higher price is because publishing is economical only when printed in large quantities on offset. This limited AKB Books edition of the Mba will be for you loyal readers, and you alone. Why did I change my mind and decide to do it this way after all? Well, that’s just it. I didn’t change my mind. Something happened that nobody could have expected, and it changed the situation dramatically.
Better an epic read by a few than by none. Keep in touch! Don’t be a stranger, wokay!
Why I Write – Maureen Tkacik
Maureen Tkacik (also known as Moe Tkacik) is a writer and journalist based in New York. She’s worked at the Wall Street Journal, Jezebel and freelanced as well. I liked this essay by her in Columbia Journalism Review about her experiences in journalism and how journalism has changed. It’s not strictly a ‘Why’ I write piece but it sort of fits into the general theme. Here’s a quote:
What I sensed was that while the laws of supply and demand governed everything on earth, the easy money was in demand—manufacturing it, manipulating it, sending it forth to multiply, etc. As a rule of thumb (and with some notable exceptions), the profit margins you could achieve selling a good or service were directly correlated to the total idiocy and/or moral bankruptcy of the demand you drummed up for it.
This was easier to grasp if you were in the business of peddling heroin, Internet stocks, or celebrity gossip; journalists, on the other hand, were at a conspicuous disadvantage when it came to understanding their role in this equation. In the past, newspapers had made respectable margins selling a non-inane product largely because people had little choice but to herald their sublets and white sales alongside the journalists’ tales of human suffering/corporate corruption/government ineptitude. The times were prosperous enough that much of the print media even chose to abstain from taking a share of the demand-creation campaigns of liquor and tobacco brands in the seventies and eighties. Indeed, journalism, it went without saying, was about delivering important information about the world—information people (and democracy!) needed, whether they knew it or not. That journalism’s ability to deliver that information—to fill that need—ultimately depended, to an unsettling degree, on the ability to create artificial demand for a lot of stuff that people didn’t actually need—luxury condos, ergonomically correct airplane seats, the latest celebrity-endorsed scent—was an afterthought at best, at least in the newsroom.
Read the full essay by Maureen (Moe) Tkacik at Columbia Journalism Review.
Read a feature article by her at Vanity Fair.
Read a feature article by her at The New York Times.
Read a feature article by her at The Investigative Fund.
Check out her blog.
Ramayana Rediscovered – book review
This is an old book review by me. I don’t recall where it was published and don’t have an online link, although it was fairly recent – so it was probably one of a couple of book reviews I agreed to do for Times of India. The reason was obvious: the subject was one of interest to me!
THE PENGUIN COMPANION TO THE RAMAYANA
By Bishnupada Chakravarty, Translated from Bengali by Debjani Banerjee
Did you know that the Valmiki Ramayana tells us that Dasaratha permitted Sita the use of clothes during the 14-year exile–and that Lakshman carried them around in a leather case? Or that when they were married, Sita was only 6 years old and Rama 13? Or that after he became king, Rama made Sita sit on his lap and drink with him? Or that kshatriyas were freely permitted to drink and eat meat, and to indulge their sensual needs—Dasaratha had 350 wives? Or that the Pushpak was designed very similarly to modern aircraft, with seats by the windows, and was fuelled by a mixture of honey, vegetable oil, mercury, and alcohol? Or that Rama was known as Kakpakshadhar because of his long sideburns (Kakpaksha means sideburns)? Or that even if Kaikeyi had not pressed her boons upon Dasaratha, he would still have had to make Bharata king because he had vowed to Kaikeyi’s father Ashwapathi that his grandson would be crowned king?
No, I haven’t made those factoids up. You’ll find them all, and several dozen more, listed in the section titled ‘Known and Little-known Facts of The Ramayana’, in The Penguin Companion To The Ramayana. If, like me, you’ve spent several years reading and rereading every possible edition of the adi-kavya, you may not find such revelations surprising but if you’ve always wanted to actually sit down and read the Valmiki Ramayana but never had the time, then this handy little guide is perfect for you. It has a short synopsis of the epic, followed by a more detailed narration–but which also eliminates several key details for want of space–and sections like the one mentioned above, which goes beyond such little factoids to provide short essays on the working of the Pushpak, the route that Rama and his companions flew on the way back from Lanka to Ayodhya, a Reader’s Ready Reference which lists all the major personalities and places in alphabetical order, and even a map depicting Rama’s route during the exile, and Pushpak’s flight afterwards.
Everything is based on the Valmiki Ramayana. As you’re probably aware already, the Kamban Ramayana differs in a plethora of details, including geography, names, flora, fauna, dress, language, customs, and even the events of the story itself. As for Tulidasa’s Ramcharitramanas, which is often mistaken for a retelling of the Ramayana itself (it’s actually a commentary on the epic), the differences are not only of detail but of spirit as well. For that matter, even Valmiki, a reformed dacoit formerly named Ratnakar, never claimed to have created the story of the Ramayana; he sincerely believed it to be a true history and simply wrote it down in his legendary kraunchya metered verse, thereby marking the beginning of all literature. If you’d like to know more about this seminal epic of our culture, this little companion is a great way to do it quickly and entertainingly. It also makes a great guide to have by your side when reading other, much longer retellings by certain modern authors, whom we shall not name!
On Writing First Person Point of View: The Rumpus tells you how
The Rumpus has become my go-to literary website every morning. I always seem to find something of interest there (and I don’t mean the explicitly pornographic websites that advertise on the site – yes, I’m not kidding). It’s a literary Work-in-Progress. I also enjoy Stephen Elliott’s ruminative email updates each morning in my mailbox, which often include brief mentions of his sexual leisure activities – hints of his girlfriend coming over with ‘needles and ropes’ and stuff like that, what drug to take today, and so on. I guess it’s true what they say, we’re attracted to read about or watch people who are nothing like us in real life, at least it applies to me. I can read about or watch films about people whose lives are nothing like my own and I feel I understand them better than I would, say, movies or books about authors who mostly sit around and read and write and watch movies or spend time with their families.
Anyway, today’s pick from The Rumpus is this excellent essay by Rob Roberge on Point of View in writing. It doesn’t say anything I didn’t already know, but it says it simply and clearly and explains it well. Here’s an excerpt:
when a writer has chosen to tell a narrative in first-person, they’ve made a choice that offers them plenty of opportunities, among them:
Immediacy.
The intensity, drive and wonderful rhythms and word choices of human speech,
The chance to exploit and explore a single voice and no fear of shifting Point of View at the wrong time (since they’ve chosen to tell the story in only one POV)
Among the obstacles inherent in first-person?:
You’re trapped with that single voice and you’ve offered yourself no variation in POV—so it better be a compelling one in every single word choice (though this is true of second and third-person, as well). But you run the risk of a redundant voice.
When a reader sees the opening line is in first-person, there is a tacit contract with the reader (often an unconscious one, understood simply from hours, days and years of exposure to narrative) that the text will be contained to that single POV. This, of course, assumes it’s not a multiple first-person narrative, like As I Lay Dying, or a novel that will shift—nearly always unsuccessfully—from first-person to third-person at some point, as in Hemingway’s problematic (primarily because of its lack of focus caused by the shift between first and third-person) To Have and Have Not.
As a result of the reader knowing the POV will stay in the mind of your first-person narrator, there is the accompanying tacit contract—that no scene will occur without the narrator being present to observe/participate in the scene.
“The best goddamn book about being a writer” – book review
I don’t recall exactly where this book review first appeared. But I know when it appeared. as the first line suggests, it was the same year that Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ was published, probably within a week or two of it’s publication. I still stand by the review – ‘Youngblood Hawke’ is a great goddamn novel.
In Stephen King’s new non-fiction book On Writing, the King of bestsellers candily reveals several shocking insights into his life and career. Among the more controversial revelations are the ones about his drug abuse, dependence on presciption medicines and excessive use of alcohol.
Interestingly, these eye-opening tidbits weren’t written after his recent accident as some critics first assumed but were already in the draft that lay on his desk at the time of the accident.
Those who have had the pleasure of reading King’s earlier non-fiction book Danse Macabre as well as his countless interviews (the best of which were collected in the book Bare Bones) will know that cutting open a vein comes naturally to King.
In fact, King is one of the few mega-selling writers whose personal attitudes and professional persona are very much alike. Unlike Jackie Collins, Danielle Steele, or David Baldacci whose personal histories have virtually nothing in common with their authorial voices and sensibilities, King the writer and King the man are much the same person. Or so I deduce after twenty-odd years of reading everything by him I could lay my hands on.
But rarely does an author reveal his whole story in a book, however honest he or she may be in real life. In fact, some of the most brutally honest novelists whose books are filled with shattering human insights and emotional truths so stunning that they haunt the public imagination for generations tend to be miserly with their own personal stories.
How much do you know about any author really? Nowhere near as much as you probably know about, say, a film star or socialite. Even the most famous authors are far more comfortable writing about other people than being written about themselves.
V.S. Naipaul, for instance, was notorious until a few years ago for turning journalists out of his door on the most trivial of excuses – “You’re too young to have read all my books,” he said famously to one young lady reporter. Anything to avoid talking about himself.
Which is why it’s rare to find a book that tells you truthfully what it’s really like to be a writer. Let alone a famous, highly regarded writer.
In fact, there’s not been a truly great novel in generations that takes you behind the scenes of the writing life. There aren’t even too many too choose from: One recent bestseller was titled just that, Bestseller. A pacy, enjoyable novel by Olivia Goldsmith, author of The First Wives Club, Flavour of the Month and other woman-of-substance novels, it was a refreshing insight into the big bad world of modern publishing.
Over the years there have been a few such books here and there. Some have even been quite readable. You might be able to think of several.
But how many really first-class novels have you read that deal with the writing life? Stephen King’s own Bag of Bones is one of the few commercially successful novels that was also critically well-received. But the story concerns itself mainly with the protagonist’s attempt to come to terms with his wife’s sudden death rather than with his career as a bestselling novelist.
Recently, while reading Herman Wouk’s war saga, I decided to go back to one of his earlier, lesser known books. It’s a novel called Youngblood Hawke. Coincidentally, I had picked it up at a second-hand bookstore years ago, after reading a similar essay on novels about writers, written by Stephen King. In that piece, he had recommended this novel highly, and claimed it was the best novel about a writer’s life that he had ever read, or words to that effect.
I began reading Youngblood Hawke with scepticism. Having some minor experience of the writing life myself, I was prepared for another soapy sexy melodrama set against the backdrop of the writing life. Or even a vast, sprawling saga set in the publishing world, just as Wouk’s War novels were human dramas set against the historic events of the Second World War.
There was also the off-putting fact that this novel was first published in 1962 and was set in the period of the late 1940′s and early 1950′s. Now, how on earth could any novel about publishing in that period have any relevance to the field today?
But once I read a few pages of Youngblood Hawke, I had to read a few more. And then a few chapters more. And then another hundred pages, and then another. And so on, until a day or two later I put down this 878 page-novel with a sigh of disbelief.
Youngblood Hawke is not just a novel about the writer’s life. It’s a great novel. I’m saying that with no holds barred, no critical hedging or cadging. I’m not a critic, first of all, just a reader and book-lover. So I’m not ashamed to call a spade a spade, and a heart a heart.
And this one’s a bright, red, pulsing big-hearted ace of a novel. No question about it. It’s the kind of novel that doesn’t take into account the short attention spans of television, the glamorous scene-stealing special effects of big-budget cinema, the thousand distractions of modern living. It doesn’t even make concessions to bestseller ingredients, to commercial viability and smart packaging.
It simply tells its tale, at the length the tale deserves, with the detail and attention to detail that they deserve. Whatever happens seems completely inevitable, as credible (or incredible) as real life itself. I’m sure Youngblood Hawke must have been a bestseller – Wouk never wrote a non-seller in his life, to my knowledge – but it’s not written like a cold-hearted bestseller. It’s a hotblooded genuine giant of a book, a roaring young monster of a story that just rages and reaches for the sky and grabs a fistful.
This is probably the best goddamn story I’ve read in a novel in months. Don’t even ask me which was the last novel I read that touched me so deeply, I can’t remember it’s name.
Don’t be put off by the title. Youngblood Hawke, or Arthur Hawke as the author’s more homely name is in the story, is the protagonist of this redblooded story. He’s a new novelist whose first novel has just been accepted for publication by a major New York publishing house.
The editor assigned to the book, a foppish, pompous, pseudo-literary type that reminds me of half a dozen major Indian editors in New Delhi even today, hates the book as well as its author. He looks down upon it as middlebrow fiction, fit only to sell to the ignorant masses in order to raise money to publish “real” literature.
It’s the same reaction that Dickens, Balzac, Faulkner, and a dozen other great names received when they first sought to be published. And this is where the truth of Wouk’s novel begins – and never lets up. He tells you what it really is like to be a talented, prolific, eventually successful and bestselling American novelist. He shows you every twist and turn of the path with such authority and generosity you simply gape and enjoy the ride.
I won’t tell you the story of Youngblood Hawke because that’s the beauty of this book: A great story, brilliantly told. You will, of course, find some parts tedious, especially if you think television and films are entertainment and books should all be elegantly crafted prose poems less than 150 pages in hardback. But if you take the time and effort to read them, you’ll find that no crafty literary novelist would trouble himself with so much authentic detail.
And most amazing of all, despite the fact that close to half a century divides the period and writing of this novel from the present day, the novel still stands as a valid portrait. If not in every detail of the publishing industry – a few more zeroes have been added to every figure mentioned – then certainly in every human and emotional detail.
As the old cliché goes about writing well: Just cut open a vein and let it flow. Wouk sure as hell opens that vein and it flows so freely and richly, his typewriter must have been washed in blood! Someone get the man a transfusion.
Youngblood Hawke is the best goddamn book about a writer I’ve ever read. What’s more it’s a great goddamn book about anybody, period.
Punishing authors for buying their own books
Did you know that if an author wants to buy copies of his own work, he has to pay more than a bookstore pays the publisher for the same books? That’s right – the author gets worse terms than the bookstore gets! Not only that, publishers actually penalize authors for buying copies of their own books by not paying them royalty on those copies, and often have a clause in their contracts prohibiting authors from selling copies of their own books. This is just one of several discriminatory trade practices that treat authors unfairly – in fact, despite being the creators and sole developers of the intellectual property that forms the basis of all publishing and book-selling business, authors actually earn the least margin on the cover price of a book. So, for example, the highest margin goes to the large book chains, the next big chunk to the publisher, then the distributor and stockist. In the case of smaller bookstores, the publisher takes the biggest chunk, with the distributor, stockist and retailer taking the rest. Oh, and of course the author gets some portion of that cover price – if he’s been able to have an agent who negotiated a tough contract for him guaranteeing, let’s say, anywhere from 5% to 10% on the price of a paperback, and perhaps even 10% to 15% on the price of a hardcover – but of course, the agent will then take a percentage of the author’s income in exchange for negotiating that contract.
Of the cover price of Rs 100 on a book, for example, the author would get no more than Rs 10, from which amount he has to pay his agent, income tax, expenses and overheads – as well as recover the time, effort, talent he’s invested in research, writing, rewriting, trying to find an agent, waiting for a publisher to buy the book, the time spent revising as per the publisher’s editorial suggestions, proof-checking, promoting the book, and of course, pay for the conceptualization, development, and writing of the intellectual property itself.
Meanwhile, for exploiting and selling that intellectual property, the publisher, book chain, distributor, stockist, all get to share the remaining Rs 90 – and since they are dealing with hundreds, or even thousands of such authors and books, their risk is amortized across all those titles. While the author in question has only that one book and that Rs 10 per copy to show for all his efforts. If he drops dead, leaving his family penniless, or if he’s unable to make ends meet on that Rs 10, nobody cares. The business of publishing and selling books goes on. Publishers travel Business Class, editors lunch at five star hotels, book chain executives earn substantial salaries and perks, in short, everybody makes a healthy profit out of selling the books created, developed, and written by authors – everybody except the author himself.
This rant by Stephen Elliot talks about just one aspect of how unfairly authors are treated, focussing on how authors have to pay more for copies of their own books than book chains and the publishers (who actually earn more than their standard profit when selling copies to authors), and are additionally penalized for buying their own books by not getting paid royalties on those copies. The comments, many by published authors, tells you how widespread such inequities are in the publishing system worldwide. And this, I must add, is a time and age when things are actually far, far better than they have ever been in the history of publishing. I don’t even want to think about the time when authors had to sign over their copyrights in perpetuity to publishers just for the ‘honour’ of having their books published!
Here’s an excerpt from the article at The Rumpus:
Publishers are charging authors 60% of the cover price, no matter how many copies they order, and the books are non-returnable. Every bookstore is getting a better deal than that. Anytime a bookstore orders a copy or two if they pay 60% the books are returnable. For a large order, say over 250 copies, a bookstore will usually only pay 45% of the cover price. When you get up to 1,000 copies the wholesale price goes down to 40%.
No matter how many copies authors buy, with most large publishers they can never get books for less than 60% of the cover price, non-returnable. The result is that authors are discouraged from selling their own books.
Indian media, PR and publishing pros continue cover-up of Davidar sex scandal, attack critics and victims
FINAL UPDATE 7 JULY: DAVIDAR/PENGUIN SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND ASSAULT CASE SETTLED OUT OF COURT, DEFENDANTS MUZZLED. As expected (and as predicted by me), the Davidar case has been settled for an undisclosed but allegedly quite substantial sum of money. So much for all the Davidar apologists who defended him in the face of his predatory sexual behavior and insisted that ‘the truth’ would come out in court. Apparently, the truth has been paid off and silenced. Money speaks louder than truth after all. One thing is clear though: No innocent person settles out of court. An innocent man would want his day in court to clear his name. That says it all.
IMPORTANT (& HOPEFULLY FINAL) UPDATE 21 JUNE: DAVIDAR ADMITS ALL, ATTEMPTS DAMAGE CONTROL BY CALLING RELATIONSHIP ‘CONSENSUAL’. David Davidar has issued a statement via his lawyer admitting that he did indeed enter into an improper relationship with the former employee Lisa Rundle. You can click here to read the statement or right-click to download it. Someone should inform him that when a married man enters into a sexual relationship with a subordinate, gives her gifts, lunches, hotel stays (all on company expense), and even a pay raise and promotion (despite a company wide freeze), it’s called SEXUAL HARASSMENT and INFIDELITY. The latter may not be punishable by law. The former definitely is. I stand vindicated now as one of the few publishing professionals who have known Davidar personally and been well aware of his past history of similar sexual harassment. You can call it ‘Romantic Obsession’ or whatever else you like, it still comes down to the same thing – the dude gets sexually fixated on women co-workers to the point of a sick obsession. He needs help. His victims deserve justice.
Note: 18 June: My posts on the David Davidar sexual assault lawsuit and the subsequent cover-up and media manipulation by his friends in India attracted more hits than my host servers could handle. For only the second time since I started blogging, my blog servers crashed. I had no choice but to temporarily turn the Davidar posts to a private status and wait until the click-frenzy died down. I’m now cautiously making them public again but will watch and see. There’s little point in having a blog if even I can’t access it to update or reply to comments. Speaking of which, I’m not accepting further comments on the Davidar issue – nor am I interested in giving quotes to any media persons, so please don’t ask again.
The media scandal in India continues with the publishing world continuing to reject the testimonies of both victims as well as other women bloggers who have come forward and written about the widespread prevalence of sexual harassment in Canadian publishing – and publishing in general. The Beatification of Davidar continues as former colleagues and present high-ranking editors and publishing professionals express outrage not at Davidar’s alleged misbehavior but at people (like myself, I suppose) who could even think that he’s capable of such misbehavior.
In a telling quote from one of the rare balanced articles about the sex scandal, an online journal named Open Magazine (which I only just discovered existed) had this telling line:
Perspective is hard to come by when the public mood is so completely one of adulation.
My point exactly: The issue isn’t whether or not David was a good publishing professional, a great man, wonderful husband, etc, etc, but why the India media world is maintaing such a tight-lipped silence on this explosive news story. And why those few (like myself) who are daring to speak out and question this media silence are being threatened and vilified in the media through a concerted campaign of lies, half-truths and outright defamation.
Several bloggers and Twitterati have even resorted to a smear campaign against me now – in particular negative-PR expert and frequent abuser of online forums Surekha Pillai has begun making personal attacks on me, while Twitter users @nikhilnarayanan @vrsaju @twilightfairy and numerous commentators on Sepiamutiny.com have begun attacking the messenger with a vengeance. Perhaps someone should tell them not to take the David Davidar case so personally – unless, that is, they have been on the giving or receiving end of such things themselves!
In one case, an anonymous Twitterati calling itself @indiafiles cooked up a fictional ‘news story’ he/she claimed to have read in which I apparently complained about David Davidar rejecting my novel. Lol. People who indulge in character assassination should get their facts right: I have rejected several contracts offered to me by David over the years, and in fact, the contracts signed with David (and Penguin India) out-number those with any other publisher in my entire career. Since I’ve been called out on this yet again, let me mention the number: 37 contracts. That’s right. 37 contracts with a single publisher. The royalties alone run into several tens of lakhs of rupees, by the way. I may be critical of David’s sexual predatory behaviour, but I am not doing so because I didn’t get a book deal with him! I think that tells you how vicious and unfounded these lies are and how low people like this @indiafiles can stoop to divert attention from the real story here. This is how websites like Twitter and Facebook empower trash talking gossip-mongers. I am now considering legal action against the above-mentioned. It will be interesting to see how they prove their lies and bullshit in court. Let me recheck that Twitter handle: Is it @indiafiles or @indialies?
Further tweets from @ravikapoor, a self-described “celebrity gossip blogger”, @shwetakapur “gossip queen”, and @twilightfairy who is in fact Priyanka Sachar, an amateur photographer continue the campaign of vilification against me personally, shrewdly attempting to deflect attention from the real issues here. Self-described PR professional @surekhapillai continues to misuse a public medium to hurl personal insults while calling herself a “victim”, perhaps forgetting that the only victims here are the women sexually harassed and assaulted by Davidar. The fact that authorities at Twitter itself (among other social networking sites) have tagged their tweets as potentially offensive and objectionable on various grounds – @surekhapillai refers to me as “people like Banker”, suggesting a religious and cultural bias – and have been forwarding their tweets to me with the disclaimer that the website is not responsible for the content generated by users only enhances my case of criminal defamation against these individuals and their employers, should I choose to pursue legal action.
This is a predictable tactic online these days – if you don’t like what the person is saying or the point being made, make up a story about the person himself, and smear him using any means available. In addition, one or more persons have been going around websites and leaving incendiary comments claiming to have been made by me. (Someone should tell them that from early 2010 I have been on a strict blog-only policy – I deleted my Facebook, Orkut, Twitter and other social networking accounts and have a strict policy of not commenting on any other blog except this one, my own.)
This pathetic attempt at a personal smear campaign underlines the very issue I’m trying to raise. Need I even point out the fact that if so many people feel the need to attack me personally, it’s clearly their way of deflecting attention from the real issue at hand? Especially when some of those named here are known to blog and Tweet paid messages on behalf of their clients. All they do is prove my point about the cover-up by the media and such celebrity Twitterati in an ongoing campaign to attack all critics of Davidar – including the victims and bloggers like myself – through such intimidation and abuse, perhaps in the hope of scaring away other women who have been similarly abused and assaulted by men like Davidar in publishing.
Meanwhile, the Indian media maintains a stubborn silence, continuing the cover-up of the Davidar’s case and proving yet again that Indian media is bought, controlled, manipulated and managed by the rich and powerful in this country. Is there really any hope for the case itself?
Davidar’s supporters insist that we should all wait for the court case and let the courts decide (although they continue to protest Davidar’s innocence loudly and repeatedly, thereby proving their own bias and attempting to influence public opinion in the aggressor’s favour).
To that I have only one rejoinder: Warren Anderson.
Yes, of course, justice is always done in court and the guilty always booked. (I’m being sarcastic, by the way.)
And no doubt even if Davidar is found guilty, his supporters and the many paid campaigners speaking out against his critics will find some way to spin even that guilty verdict into something akin to martyrdom for the beleaguered Saint of Indian Publishing and Media.
Meanwhile, individual voices continue to emerge commenting on various aspects of the case:
Read this article on Penguin’s mismanagement of the scandal.
Read this view on the issue as well.
And finally this very sensible commentary.
There IS a casting couch in publishing, it just comes AFTER you land the job, that’s all
FINAL UPDATE 7 JULY: DAVIDAR/PENGUIN SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND ASSAULT CASE SETTLED OUT OF COURT, DEFENDANTS MUZZLED. As expected (and as predicted by me), the Davidar case has been settled for an undisclosed but allegedly quite substantial sum of money. So much for all the Davidar apologists who defended him in the face of his predatory sexual behavior and insisted that ‘the truth’ would come out in court. Apparently, the truth has been paid off and silenced. Money speaks louder than truth after all. One thing is clear though: No innocent person settles out of court. An innocent man would want his day in court to clear his name. That says it all.
IMPORTANT (& HOPEFULLY FINAL) UPDATE 21 JUNE: DAVIDAR ADMITS ALL, ATTEMPTS DAMAGE CONTROL BY CALLING RELATIONSHIP ‘CONSENSUAL’. David Davidar has issued a statement via his lawyer admitting that he did indeed enter into an improper relationship with the former employee Lisa Rundle. You can click here to read the statement or right-click to download it. Someone should inform him that when a married man enters into a sexual relationship with a subordinate, gives her gifts, lunches, hotel stays (all on company expense), and even a pay raise and promotion (despite a company wide freeze), it’s called SEXUAL HARASSMENT and INFIDELITY. The latter may not be punishable by law. The former definitely is. I stand vindicated now as one of the few publishing professionals who have known Davidar personally and been well aware of his past history of similar sexual harassment. You can call it ‘Romantic Obsession’ or whatever else you like, it still comes down to the same thing – the dude gets sexually fixated on women co-workers to the point of a sick obsession. He needs help. His victims deserve justice.
Note: My posts on the David Davidar sexual assault lawsuit and the subsequent cover-up and media manipulation by his friends in India attracted more hits than my host servers could handle. For only the second time since I started blogging, my blog servers crashed. I had no choice but to temporarily turn the Davidar posts to a private status and wait until the click-frenzy died down. I’m now cautiously making them public again but will watch and see. There’s little point in having a blog if even I can’t access it to update or reply to comments. Speaking of which, I’m not accepting further comments on the Davidar issue – nor am I interested in giving quotes to any media persons, so please don’t ask again.
In the wake of the David Davidar Penguin Canada sexual harassment lawsuit and the subsequent despicable media manipulation on the part of his friends in the India media, here’s another woman who’s dared to speak out against the powers that be. She tells it like it really is in Canadian publishing – and this was a firm that wasn’t sued for sexual harassment. Now that Davidar has been accused by two former employees, both of whom were asked to shut up by Penguin management, it raises the question: How many women are unable to afford the expense, time, physical and emotional stress of a legal trial? How many stay quiet in order to continue working in publishing? And most of all, how many successful highly placed women in publishing simply accept the situation, make the best they can of it either by gritting their teeth and tolerating some level of daily harassment or sadly, giving in to it and using it to bolster their career prospects? How many more David Davidars are there in publishing?
But most of all, I’m still asking the same question: Why is the Indian media so silent when a rich, powerful, charismatic, exceptionally successful Indian male is accused of such charges? And why are so many people in publishing still defending him even as new and more revealing facts continue to emerge about the prevalence of sexual harassment in publishing?
Here’s an excerpt from the blog post in question:
I worked in an office of all women, save for the two six-month terms the two males lasted. Other than Supervisor, we were all under 30 when we were hired, and for most of us it was our first real job in publishing, after school and internships.
The atmosphere at the office was very casual. We were encouraged to view each other more as friends than co-workers.
Interestingly enough, it sounds exactly like the atmosphere at Penguin India described by Davidar’s defenders! (Although of course, it’s not – this is a Canadian publishing house she’s describing, but it raises the point that sexual harassment and gender bias can occur just as easily in a friendly happy office atmosphere where the majority of the staff are women.)
Then she gets to the nub:
I flirted back, when he’d flirt, and I’m ashamed. But I blame him. I blame the way he manipulated us into thinking it was all part of the job, the “culture” of the office. We were often told to “entertain” people at our parties, like we were geisha. Dress sexy, be the first ones on the dance floor, get drinks. Looking back, I feel like we were supposed to represent not the brains and talent of our office, but the tits and ass. Lucky for him, we were a smart, hard-working bunch of people, and we managed to make that place work. That made him look good too. You know, I’m still not sure really what he does, other than take buyers to lunch. His tales of business trips always involved a lot of drinking, eating, and weed-smoking. At Book Expo, he’d point out all the women he’d slept with.
And most tellingly, she writes this damning sentence:
Some of my old co-workers still defend him. I can’t begin to imagine why.
I do imagine why. It fascinates me. Why would so many women defend a man who’s a sexual predator? Because he’s nice, warm, friendly, likable, attractive, successful – a good professional, a great publisher, a terrific employer? And the sexual harassment part? Just a normal male flaw? Perhaps. I don’t claim to have all the answers. But I’m still asking the questions – because nobody else is.
In a follow-up post,the same blogger writes:
When I wrote yesterday’s post, I linked it on my Twitter account so my friends could read it. Over 500 hits later, I’m humbled and stunned that it has traveled so far. Thank-you, everyone, so many of you, for your kind linking and for your support.
As for me, I believe that the reason why so many publishing professionals are denying that David could ever be capable of such acts and why the Indian media is keeping this whole issue so low key is because sexual harassment, gender bias, intimidation, and even assault is widespread and rampant in Indian publishing and media, and everyone’s scared to tip the lid on this steaming hot can of boiled worms.
UPDATE 18 JUNE: The media scandal in India continues with the publishing world continuing to reject the testimonies of both victims as well as other women bloggers who have come forward and written about the widespread prevalence of sexual harassment in Canadian publishing – and publishing in general. The Beatification of Davidar continues as former colleagues and present high-ranking editors and publishing professionals express outrage not at Davidar’s alleged misbehavior but at people (like myself, I suppose) who could even think that he’s capable of such misbehavior. Several bloggers and Twitterati have even resorted to a smear campaign against me now – in particular negative-PR expert and frequent abuser of online forums Surekha Pillai has begun making personal attacks on me, while Twitter users @nikhilnarayanan and @vrsaju, and numerous commentators on Sepiamutiny.com have begun attacking the messenger with a vengeance. This is a predictable tactic online these days – if you don’t like what the person is saying or the point being made, make up a story about the person himself, and smear him using any means available. In addition, one or more persons have been going around websites and leaving incendiary comments claiming to be made by me. Need I even point out the fact that if so many people feel the need to attack me personally, it’s clearly their way of deflecting attention from the real issue at hand. Especially when some of them, like those named here, are known to blog and Tweet paid messages on behalf of their clients. All they do is prove my point about the cover-up by the media and such celebrity Twitterati in an ongoing campaign to attack all critics of Davidar – including the victims and bloggers like myself – through such intimidation and abuse, perhaps in the hope of scaring away other women who have been similarly abused and assaulted by men like Davidar in publishing.
Meanwhile, the Indian media maintains a stubborn silence, continuing the cover-up of the Davidar’s case and proving yet again that Indian media is bought, controlled, manipulated and managed by the rich and powerful in this country. Is there really any hope for the case itself? Davidar’s supporters insist that we should all wait for the court case and let the courts decide (although they continue to protest Davidar’s innocence loudly and repeatedly, thereby proving their own bias and attempt to influence public opinion in the aggressor’s favour). To that I have only one rejoinder: Warren Anderson. Yes, of course, justice is always done in court and the guilty always booked. And no doubt even if Davidar is found guilty, his supporters and the many paid campaigners speaking out against his critics will find some way to spin even that guilty verdict into something akin to martyrdom for th beleaguered Saint of Indian Publishing and Media.
Meanwhile, individual voices continue to emerge commenting on various aspects of the case:
Read this article on Penguin’s mismanagement of the scandal.
Read this view on the issue as well.
And finally this very sensible commentary.
“He drank a lot and liked to fall in love” – further thoughts (and quotes) on the now twice-accused ex-Penguin CEO David Davidar
FINAL UPDATE 7 JULY: DAVIDAR/PENGUIN SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND ASSAULT CASE SETTLED OUT OF COURT, DEFENDANTS MUZZLED. As expected (and as predicted by me), the Davidar case has been settled for an undisclosed but allegedly quite substantial sum of money. So much for all the Davidar apologists who defended him in the face of his predatory sexual behavior and insisted that ‘the truth’ would come out in court. Apparently, the truth has been paid off and silenced. Money speaks louder than truth after all. One thing is clear though: No innocent person settles out of court. An innocent man would want his day in court to clear his name. That says it all.
IMPORTANT (& HOPEFULLY FINAL) UPDATE 21 JUNE: DAVIDAR ADMITS ALL, ATTEMPTS DAMAGE CONTROL BY CALLING RELATIONSHIP ‘CONSENSUAL’. David Davidar has issued a statement via his lawyer admitting that he did indeed enter into an improper relationship with the former employee Lisa Rundle. You can click here to read the statement or right-click to download it. Someone should inform him that when a married man enters into a sexual relationship with a subordinate, gives her gifts, lunches, hotel stays (all on company expense), and even a pay raise and promotion (despite a company wide freeze), it’s called SEXUAL HARASSMENT and INFIDELITY. The latter may not be punishable by law. The former definitely is. I stand vindicated now as one of the few publishing professionals who have known Davidar personally and been well aware of his past history of similar sexual harassment. You can call it ‘Romantic Obsession’ or whatever else you like, it still comes down to the same thing – the dude gets sexually fixated on women co-workers to the point of a sick obsession. He needs help. His victims deserve justice.
Note: My posts on the David Davidar sexual assault lawsuit and the subsequent cover-up and media manipulation by his friends in India attracted more hits than my host servers could handle. For only the second time since I started blogging, my blog servers crashed. I had no choice but to temporarily turn the Davidar posts to a private status and wait until the click-frenzy died down. I’m now cautiously making them public again but will watch and see. There’s little point in having a blog if even I can’t access it to update or reply to comments. Speaking of which, I’m not accepting further comments on the Davidar issue – nor am I interested in giving quotes to any media persons, so please don’t ask again.
So now it emerges that another woman employee at Penguin Canada had also suffered similar sexual harassment from David Davidar and when attempted to complain about the same, she was strongly discouraged by the company. Shortly after withdrawing her complaint, she received a substantial promotion. A few months after the promotion, she then left the company of her own accord and still continues to work in publishing in a senior position.
From the new facts now emerging, again reported first and covered much more widely by the Canadian media than Indian press, it appears that this was the prevailing atmosphere at Penguin Canada, an atmosphere of sexual predation for the presumably attractive women employees, and one of extreme ‘friendliness’ for Davidar himself. Interestingly, all the former employees and colleagues of Davidar who rushed to speak out in his defense and are quoted in the Indian press happen to be women, all of whom experienced some rise in fortune during their time with him. No, I’m not making any insinuations or allegations – on the contrary, I’m pointing out how misguided they now appear, having defended a man who may not have preyed on them but seems quite clearly to have been responsible of some mischief if not criminal sexual wrongdoing over in Canada. At the very least, it’s odd that every supporter of David points out how “friendly” he was and how “friendly” the working atmosphere at Penguin always used to be when he was running Penguin India. As if the atmosphere is not friendly now and wasn’t before? Are David’s successors such sourpusses then? Or are they trying to say that the atmosphere at Penguin India is now sexist and unfriendly to women employees? Supporting an accused sexual predator can be a double-edged sword.
The abuse and attacks from the “Friends” of David Davidar as well as various anonymous commentators continues unabated in my email inbox and comments feed. I’ll admit that they are largely the reason why I’m now running this third part in my series on the beleagured former publishing CEO. When a powerful corporate head is accused of sexual indiscretions and so many people rear up and start beatifying him, effectively trying to influence public opinion by offering up unsolicited character assessments, it stinks of a cover up and a campaign. Perhaps it’s not; I’ll admit that it could merely be a lot of misguided people who failed to see the dark side of a man who might have been otherwise quite brilliant. I was one of those who did see that dark side but I’ve said that already in my first post (which is now unblocked, by the way, though I’m still not accepting new comments on it), and I’m now going to offer other views.
Consider Dom Moraes for instance. David, Dom and I used to meet for breakfast often in the early 90′s – Penguin had an arrangement with Oberoi Hotels (later Hilton, now Oberoi again) and usually stayed at The Oberoi in Mumbai. We used to meet at the coffee shop at The New Oberoi and discuss books (our own as well as other authors) and from time to time other authors would join us. I was there when David was meeting with and discussing edits for Vikram Chandra’s first novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain as well as on several other occasions – our friendship tended to be more casual and wide. I often hung out with David in his hotel room discussing edits. Once I even brought my 6-year old son Ayush along and David happily ordered a chocolate ice cream from room service for him at Ayush’s request. On another occasion, I joined David and Pinki Virani – they drank Scotch, which David loved to imbibe in large quantities. I had one brush with David and Shobha De, and that was enough for me – I made it a point to avoid meeting him when he was meeting her. I also recall being with him in the lobby of the (old) Oberoi when he handed over the first royalty cheque of Rs 5 lakhs odd to R.M. Lala, the author of a hugely successful biography of Tata. And of course I brushed against all the usual suspects over the years – from Jerry Pinto to Pankaj Mishra (whose Butter Chicken in Ludhiana was a runaway bestseller at the time).
The point I’m trying to make here is that I’m not some outsider sitting on a fence and bitching because of some personal grouse. On the contrary. I’m being brutally honest and saying that sure, David had some excellent qualities. But he had some major vices too. And some were unacceptable. He drank way, way too much. He admitted to me that Frankfurt and London Book Fair were basically excuses for him to get drunk and stay sloshed for days on end, alongwith a group of other equally inebriated editors of major international houses who often pitched one another books and bought and sold one another’s pitches, sometimes for million dollar advances. He exulted in the sheer power he wielded and while he was always a thorough Gentleman in the best old-fashioned sense of the word, he also suffered from the classic Gentlemanly vices – a love for the company of other powerful decision-makers with fat chequebooks and money (not their own) to splurge as they pleased, a bottomless expense account, loads of alcohol…and, in David’s case, women. He loved women. He adored them. That was fine in itself, perhaps. But David had a problem: He fell in love with women at the drop of a spoon. He was always either in love with someone or other or had just been in love with one and was now in love with another…it was quite a mess. Everyone who knew David well knew this and while I can’t speak for the women he worked with, at least two other mutual friends that I know of – Dom Moraes and Jeet Thayil – were quite aware of David’s fondness for romance. He loved wooing women with roses and champagne, chocolates and nightgowns, candlelit dinners and long night drives. He lived for it. He was a man of big appetites and his biggest hunger was always for the romance of romance.
But don’t just take my word for it. Read what Dom Moraes had to say about it back in 2002, not long before he passed away from terminal cancer, bravely refusing chemo and insisting on slipping away naturally:
Here’s the first mention of David’s ‘problem’:
While Dhiren had abstained from most of the pleasures of the world, David was — at least then — very susceptible to them. He drank a lot and liked to fall in love.
And then Dom elaborates (the emphasis is mine):
After this David became an associate editor of Gentleman, together with Harish Mehta. The two young men invented a monthly feature. They took turns every month to interview a beautiful film starlet or model over an expensive, often candlelit dinner, paid for by the office. David’s first such dinner, with a then famous model, caused him to tell me enthusiastically that he loved her. I was not unused to these confessions. I suggested that he should declare his emotions to her, not me, and should start by asking her to a meal that he paid for himself.
Later David came to tell me the lady had accepted his invitation to dinner. He was to pick her up the following evening. I advised him to be particularly careful about the impression he made on her father, and to take her flowers. He said my ideas in these matters were unoriginal. It was Easter. In the patisserie of a hotel, he had seen a life-size Easter bunny made of chocolate. It cost a lot and with a lavish dinner would exhaust his month’s salary, but it was worth it. As to her father, he expected to have a man-to-man talk with him over a drink.
Read the complete essay by Dom Moraes at The Hindu online.
(Link courtesy Outlook blogs.)
In conclusion: Nilanjana S. Roy wrote a comment here the other day that said a very nice thing. She asked me to show some compassion for David. I responded by saying that I felt more compassion for the victim. That remains true. But I have to admit that this isn’t about taking sides, or who’s right or wrong, or even about what the courts decide. To me, it’s the likelihood that there are women everywhere being sexually harassed by powerful men like David who are unfortunately not outright sexual predators but simply overgrown adolescents who can seem very wonderful to most people…until they meet a particular type of woman and then, wham, they just go into full-scale romance-of-the-century mode. In my opinion, that’s what’s happened here. Regardless of what the court finding is – and remember that in a civil lawsuit such as this one, the vast majority of cases are decided out of court – the fact remains that such things happen all the time. And all I ask is the question: Why is David Davidar being shown so much more compassion than other powerful men in a similar position? Why not the victim? Whatever David’s rejoinder – and do note that legal defenses are not concerned with revealing the truth, merely with countering legal charges using legal methods – the fact remains that any other high-ranking corporate CEO, politician, or just about anyone rich, famous and powerful, would have been mercilessly flogged by the media just for being charged with such a complaint. It’s hard to feel compassion for David when he’s already being shown such ‘Gentlemanly’ treatment by so many mediapersons and former friends. It smells of too much team spirit. At the same time, I’m neither speaking for nor against David personally, merely viewing his case as yet another example of how the rich and powerful are regarded as above censure in India.
The Beatification of David Davidar: Or How Media Silence (& some cleverly placed quotes) speak louder than the Truth
FINAL UPDATE 7 JULY: DAVIDAR/PENGUIN SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND ASSAULT CASE SETTLED OUT OF COURT, DEFENDANTS MUZZLED. As expected (and as predicted by me), the Davidar case has been settled for an undisclosed but allegedly quite substantial sum of money. So much for all the Davidar apologists who defended him in the face of his predatory sexual behavior and insisted that ‘the truth’ would come out in court. Apparently, the truth has been paid off and silenced. Money speaks louder than truth after all. One thing is clear though: No innocent person settles out of court. An innocent man would want his day in court to clear his name. That says it all.
IMPORTANT (& HOPEFULLY FINAL) UPDATE 21 JUNE: DAVIDAR ADMITS ALL, ATTEMPTS DAMAGE CONTROL BY CALLING RELATIONSHIP ‘CONSENSUAL’. David Davidar has issued a statement via his lawyer admitting that he did indeed enter into an improper relationship with the former employee Lisa Rundle. You can click here to read the statement or right-click to download it. Someone should inform him that when a married man enters into a sexual relationship with a subordinate, gives her gifts, lunches, hotel stays (all on company expense), and even a pay raise and promotion (despite a company wide freeze), it’s called SEXUAL HARASSMENT and INFIDELITY. The latter may not be punishable by law. The former definitely is. I stand vindicated now as one of the few publishing professionals who have known Davidar personally and been well aware of his past history of similar sexual harassment. You can call it ‘Romantic Obsession’ or whatever else you like, it still comes down to the same thing – the dude gets sexually fixated on women co-workers to the point of a sick obsession. He needs help. His victims deserve justice.
Note: My posts on the David Davidar sexual assault lawsuit and the subsequent cover-up and media manipulation by his friends in India attracted more hits than my host servers could handle. For only the second time since I started blogging, my blog servers crashed. I had no choice but to temporarily turn the Davidar posts to a private status and wait until the click-frenzy died down. I’m now cautiously making them public again but will watch and see. There’s little point in having a blog if even I can’t access it to update or reply to comments. Speaking of which, I’m not accepting further comments on the Davidar issue – nor am I interested in giving quotes to any media persons, so please don’t ask again.
Imagine a famous politician, charismatic, relatively young, handsome, happily married, fairly well off, celebrated and universally loved. He’s even the spokesperson for his political party and its Chairman. One day, he’s asked to resign from his party, the administration divests him of his Cabinet post, and his career in politics is effectively ended. Why? Because a woman employee working under him for three years files a lawsuit with copious evidence of sexual harassment – emails, text messages, and detailed reports of numerous incidents culminating in an all-out sexual assault in a hotel room on a foreign trip.
Would the Indian media report this incident? Would they write anything at all about the fact that this prominent politician has been abruptly ousted from the party, the Cabinet and all ties and associations with him severed permanently? Would they write about the sexual harassment lawsuit filed against him – in a public court of law, and therefore part of the public record? Would the news channels cover the story?
What do you think?
Or, if you prefer, think of the man as a corporate CEO in any field. Same qualities: Handsome, rich, famous, popular, powerful, head of a major corporation, in fact one of the only Indians to rise so high in the global hierarchy in that industry. Again, same case: A woman employee files a lawsuit alleging repeated and prolonged sexual harassment. Considerable evidence is made available to the court and to the media. The MNC responds by sacking the man unceremoniously, severing all ties, and issuing a public statement that strongly suggests that they believe the man is definitely guilty of some wrongdoing, perhaps even all the charges against him.
Again, the same question: Would the Indian media cover the story? Would they run it on the hourly news, conduct interviews with the parties concerned, would newspaper columnists write about their opinion of the story, would editors write editorials weighing the pros and cons of such cases…in short, would the India media not be obliged to at least feature the story prominently and look at the issue in some depth?
Apparently not.
Last week, David Davidar, CEO of Penguin International, a division of Penguin Books based in Toronto which comprises Penguin Canada, Penguin India, Penguin South Africa and Penguin Arabia was sacked from his post over a sexual harassment and assault lawsuit filed against him by a former employee at Penguin Canada where he was based. The lawsuit is against Davidar in part, for his sexual harassment and assault of the victim, and also against Penguin, for failing to concede to the victim’s request that she be allocated to work under another superior as she could not work under Davidar. Penguin refused, and, the lawsuit strongly suggests, was implicitly or overtly aware of the sexual advances and predatory behavior of Davidar, but preferred to let the woman employee leave the company. Her suit against Penguin is for wrongful termination.
Now, I’m not going to get into the right and wrong of the situation. I’m not going to bash or praise either Davidar or the victim, or try to provide any other view of the alleged incidents.
I’m only asking this one question (again): Why is the Indian media not covering this story widely? As I asked above, if this were a famous charismatic politician or corporate CEO in some other industry, wouldn’t this be widely reported?
I think it would. I think it would be splashed all over the front pages and would be running 24/7 on the news channels. It would be the sensation of the week, if not the year. Davidar, after all, is not just a famous publishing figure, he’s probably the most famous Indian in publishing worldwide. Only Sonny Mehta comes close, and Sonny Mehta has been around for decades; Davidar is still relatively fresh and still continuing to rise through the ranks. It’s likely he would have been No. 1 at Penguin International in a few years.
Yet the India media is oddly silent.
Sure, there’s a mention of it here and there, mostly on the websites of publications, but no widespread coverage. Not even on the blogs and social networking sites (at first).
In fact, it would appear that I was the first Indian blogger to write about the sexual harassment case last week. And other bloggers picked up the story from me and passed it on.
But then a funny thing happened.
People began attacking me, attacking the victim, and at the same time other people (many prominent editors, publishing professionals, mediapersons, etc), began beatifying Davidar.
There’s no other word for it: Beatifying. A spontaneous outrushing of praise for the man. Extolling his best qualities. Praising his every aspect. One solitary feature story that spent more than a hundred words on the issue managed to find three or four of these Davidar fans and quoted them, all singing Davidar’s praises and insisting that he could not have done what the woman filing the lawsuit says he did.
At least three of these same Davidar fans even left comments on my blog asking why I was being critical of Davidar ‘at a time like this’. Other bloggers and commentators on other websites (not these three women whom I just referred to, I add) were far more vocal in their opinions: One lone commentator on a social networking site happened to make the mistake of asking the same question that I did, why is the media not reporting this story? He also mentioned my name as the solitary person who was not singing Davidar’s praises. Instantly, a horde descended to attack him. Another commentator insisted that this person was ‘Ashok Banker’. That was enough to set off a flaming frenzy: A third person started addressing that commentator as ‘Ashok’, heaping abuses on him, and criticizing ‘Ashok’ for everything from his clothes to his family background. Others began citing reasons why ‘Ashok Banker’ had for criticizing Davidar – obviously I had a grouse because Davidar hadn’t signed book deals with me. (In fact, Davidar has signed more book deals with me than any other editor in my career!)
These and many other abusive, inflammatory, personally offensive, racist, bigotted, and threatening comments and emails poured in on that website as well as here on this blog. It culminated with veiled warnings and threats from publishing professionals, some of whom are powerful editors and publishing executives in their own right, as well as a celebrity columnist and author and a TV show host: “You’ll lose respect,” one warned. “Don’t hit a man when he’s down,” another wrote. “Don’t you want to continue publishing books? Think of your future,” said one particularly ominous email sent by a very well-known media figure who shall remain unnamed.
Of course, all this was couched in language that suggested they were merely giving me good advice. Don’t beat the drum. Don’t ask the questions. Don’t upset the apple cart. Don’t speak your mind, even if it is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Don’t be an egoist. Don’t judge a good, wonderful, brilliant, magnificent publishing genius said one person – the fact that she had just judged him seemed to evade her completely!
Now, I can understand standing up for a friend in his time of need, even speaking on his behalf.
But these aren’t just friends we’re talking about. These are media professionals, reporters, journalists, columnists, editors, authors, publishing staffers… In short, the people who are the media.
What were they really saying, I wondered? What did they want me to do?
To shut up, of course! To not speak my mind. To stop posting links to foreign media websites and blogs that were reporting the truth about Davidar’s sexual assault lawsuit – and by ‘truth’ I mean that those websites and blogs are simply reporting the facts, not editorializing or filling column space with eulogies.
Now, it’s one thing to wait until a court judgement to decide whether a man is guilty or innocent. But it’s quite another thing to try the case in the media.
By controlling the coverage of David Davidar’s sexual assault lawsuit, the Indian media is manipulating the facts. By giving space to friends of Davidar – interestingly, all the friends quoted are powerful women in publishing, not a man among them – the media is manipulating the reportage, skewing the perspective in Davidar’s favour. By quoting statements that question the validity of the lawsuit itself, that patronize the victim and by mouthing cliches such as ‘only the courts can decide right or wrong’, the Indian media and publishing world is in fact influencing public opinion in favour of David Davidar, and saying quite openly and firmly that he must be innocent.
This is a blatant misuse of media power and of the positions which each of those women quoted occupy. As I said before, I can understand their supporting Davidar as his friends, but to speak to the media on record and provide such a biased view of the whole situation is gross misuse of power. Their friendship would have been better served had they waited for the truth in the case to come out, and let the courts decide whether or not a man apparently as wonderful as Davidar is (or was) did or did not do the things he’s alleged to have done to that woman.
And let’s face it, what do his shining qualities have to do with the case at hand? Are they saying that because he didn’t assault them, therefore he could not have assaulted any woman? What gives them the right to judge Davidar innocent before he has been tried – and by implication, to judge the woman filing the lawsuit guilty?
Because that is the real question here. Whom to believe. The rich, handsome, powerful, charismatic corporate CEO who, rumours say, is likely to seek a job in a media house, either in a newspaper or a television channel, once this present crisis blows over, or this unknown Canadian woman who is making these claims?
If David is innocent, as his supporters fiercely insist, then it naturally follows that his accuser is guilty of perjury and possibly much worse.
So that means it’s all right now to disbelieve a solitary powerless woman who has hard evidence of repeated wrongdoing, because that rich, powerful, charismatic, brilliant Indian publishing CEO (and the Indian is important too, in a racially divided field like publishing) couldn’t possibly have done all those awful things?
Or maybe even, as some commentators suggested quite strongly, maybe they weren’t such awful things after all? Even Davidar has admitted the woman and he were “friends” which is such a loaded word in this context. Even his wife is “standing by him” (which recalls another wife in a similar context, Shiney Ahuja’s wife, who stood by him, remember her?) and both husband and wife are now saying the truth will come out in court.
Well, the truth may or may not come out in court. As even the Union Carbide/Warren Anderson fiasco recently proved, justice is not always done, nor is it seen to be done, especially when powerful, rich, charismatic male CEOs are responsible for wrongdoing. So I’m more skeptical about the legal outcome of the case than the friends of Davidar.
But that’s not really the point here. If these friends were really willing to wait until the court pronounced its judgement, I could understand that. But by speaking out so vociferously, and by being so partisan in their own judgements and pronouncements, and by not acknowledging, accepting and in fact openly attacking anyone who doesn’t fall in with their ‘praise the lord’ hosanna chorus, they are already proving Davidar guilty of one thing at least: Managing and manipulating the Indian media into either not reporting what is clearly a major scandal, and a major news story with important and far-reaching implications for Indians everywhere, and Indian publishing and media in particular – not to mention the manner in which sexual harassment cases are reported and treated in this country – and worse, of attempting to bias public opinion in his favour in a case which substantially hinges on a ‘He Said, She Said’ choice. By beatifying David Davidar thus, his supporters are by implication demonizing his accuser. And by doing so, they are participating in a willing and wilful subversion of the power of the media, as well as misusing their own individual positions in their profession as well as in society as influential citizens.
And somewhere at the heart of this whole horrific cover up is a solitary woman who has allegedly suffered sustained and repeated abuse, harassment, and assault. What about her point of view? What about the possibility that she is telling the truth? What about the simple fact that she has filed a lawsuit, and Penguin has sacked their most charismatic CEO (beyond doubt)? Are these not important enough to report?
UPDATE 16 JUNE: And now it appears that the complainant is not so solitary after all. Another former employee of Davidar has come forward to say that she too suffered similar sexual harassment at the hands of Davidar and her attempt at a complaint was similarly rebuffed with the excuse that he was simply being ‘friendly’. What is even more ominous about the second complaint is that this woman too (who has permitted the media to mention her by name) received a substantial promotion soon after she withdrew the complaint and was then able to move to another publishing firm a few months later at a higher post and salary. In the first case too, the woman attempted to complain to Penguin management, was discouraged from complaining and given a substantial promotion before subsequently resigning from the company. The other similarity between the two women is that both had mothers suffering from cancer at the time of the harassment and that Davidar and Penguin’s HR department claimed that the gifts and flowers and overtures of ‘friendship’ were done by him out of commiseration and sympathy.
What I’d now like to ask is whether Davidar had this same ‘friendly’ approach with other female staff as well over the years? Especially the more attractive ones? It’s already emerged that he managed to cover up at least one prior case; how many more did he cover up over his 25 years in publishing? Or will Davidar’s support from the Indian media, publishing and corporate world be powerful enough to silence any other former victims as well?
This case reminds me of a very sad and true case of a small town doctor hauled up on charges of child sexual abuse. Apparently, he had been abusing the children sent to him for treatment for decades and by the time parents worked up the courage to finally file a suit against him and by the time the suit finally came to trial and judgement, the small town judge basically said that the doctor was an old man now, had lived his life serving the community, was a respected and honourable member of society, and no good would be served by punishing him now – and dismissed the case. As for the hundreds of children he had abused over the years? Well, most of them were too small to speak for themselves – and even when they had spoken up, they were after all children, and how much could they be believed?
In another case recently in Mumbai, a taxi driver was arrested and charged with raping a stray dog. In court, his lawyer raised the point that since the victim was incapable of speaking and identifying her attacker, the case should be dismissed forthright.
Now, I’m not saying Davidar is guilty. All I’m saying is that the story of his being sued for these offenses, dishonourably sacked, and subsequently beatified by people who should know better than to misuse their power thus is a story that deserves and demands to be given the widest coverage possible. We may never know whether or not the woman is telling the truth. But if we are to assume cynically that every rich, famous powerful man is automatically innocent and that a powerless nameless woman who accuses him of rape or sexual assault or harassment is automatically not to be relied on, we are sending out a powerful and tragic message:
HERE BE TYGERS: Beware, all you who dare to accuse powerful rich handsome Indian men in high-ranking corporate positions! Even if you are telling the truth, you have no right to destroy this good man’s life and career. Shut up and get lost. This is a great man, a wonderful man, a man we all respect and honour and love. You are nobody. You are nothing. You are just a woman, and not even a famous or powerful woman at that.
A very limited number of copies of the AKB Books edition will be available again soon - and the Penguin mass market edition will be out in a few months! 
The long-awaited final volume in the Ramayana Series will be issued in a very Limited Edition by AKB Books, while the mass market paperback will be published early next year by Penguin Books! 