Résumé: Twenty-nine books, including novels, non-fiction, fiction, children’s books, travelogues and technical books. Some translated into 20 languages and one Braille system. Twenty-six million copies of her books sold, of which 1.5 million are in English alone. Nothing succeeds like success. And it would be foolhardy to argue with that.
With a clutch of awards, honorary doctorates, her 200th title, Sudha Murty’s Here, There and Everywhere comes to her readers as a collection of her best-loved stories. Perhaps one could call it a garland of memories, even as modestly the author admits that she cannot ‘spin words like books from the West or by some Indian writers in English’. But English no longer remains the preserve of the sahibs (as it was in the once-upon-a-time days).
English has worked its way into the homes of common people. Gently, blessed and aided by Saraswati, the Goddess of Knowledge, Learning and Writing, Murty brings to her readers a bunch of stories straight from the heart. That’s what accounts for her popularity as an eminently readable writer. Reading her is to look into the crystal clear waters of a mountain stream, where without artifice or craft, you see the rounded boulders on the river-bed.
Take for instance, ‘In India, the Worst of Both Worlds’. It is the familial tale of a son who abandons his aged father as a nameless destitute in an old people’s home. Pathos comes to the fore when the old man passes away. When his tattered bag is opened, out comes a bank passbook. To the very son who had betrayed him in his hour of need, the man has bequeathed everything.
Admittedly, there are only two new stories in a packaging of 22. I’m uneasy with this millennium marketing of repackaged old stories. What else can you say? Your atypical regular reader has ended up paying twice over for reading stories that have already been read. This ‘old wine in new bottle’ strategy does wonders in boosting the sales graph for publishing houses but leaves the customer diddled.
All you have to do is to reshuffle a few stories, throw in a new story or two, give it a brand new title, paste on a new cover and put them back on the stand and hey presto! You’ve just dealt a new hand—well almost. What, in essence you’ve done is add to the list of publications by an author while at the same time shortchanging the old faithful book buyer. So while we are talking about figures, the strike rate in this instance is approximately nine percent for what is touted as a ‘200th book’.