CHENNAI: Vampires with bared fangs, hideous looking women, blood-dripping daggers and screaming skulls… The grotesque figures stare at you from their garish covers.
They are ubiquitous — hogging roadside pavements, newsvendors’ stalls, bus terminals and railway stations.
The paper is cheap, the contents lurid. True, they are no longer the rage like in the 1980s. Nor are they easy on the pocket anymore. Literary writers brush them off as “cheap thrillers”. Let them stew in their own selfimportance.
Tamil pocket novels, of the crime genre, are here to stay.
Ask G Asokan, pioneer of pocket book publishing in Tamil. The “SSLC fail” began as an office boy in a printing press in 1981. Today, he runs an 8,000 sq ft publishing firm G A Publications at Triplicane.
Output: 2.2 lakh copies a month and they sell like hotcakes through out India and Malaysia.
Competition is next-door.
Vivek Publications, started by husband-wife duo S P Ramu and R Valli Meena at Ice House in 1987, prints 1.5 lakh copies a month. Fiction factories like theirs, located in the city’s bylanes, are churning out hundreds of these potboilers — romance, sentimental tearjerkers and suspense stories — running between 100-150 pages and priced at Rs 10 to Rs 25. Estimates are that about 6 lakh copies make their way to the market eve r y month.
Remember the publishing cliché: Nothing sells like sex and crime. Little wonder that Asokan brings out two crime novels every month — 60,000 copies each.
‘Crime King’ Rajesh Kumar is their leading writer. Vivek Publications is close on his heels with two monthlies — 43,000 copies each — written by Subha. Sri Iswarya Publications comes out with Indira Soundararajan’s supernatural thrillers.
Crime fiction is no longer “read quickly, guiltily, under desks, on buses and beaches and in stationery cupboards”.
Today, leading Tamil writers count doctors, lawyers, policemen, students and women as their fans. So, what lures the world and his wife to crime novels? “Crime lurks in the depth of every man’s heart,” Rajesh Kumar says. And he stumps you with his list of the three oldest ‘crime novels’ — Ramayana, Mahabharata and Silapadhikaram. “The first woman to be kidnapped by a man was Sita,” he points out. “With every conceivable plot, sub-plot and conspiracy and incidents like disrobing of Draupadi, Mahabharata is the first mega crime novel.” He may be ruffling a few feathers when he says: “Kannagi is the first arsonist as she burnt down Madurai in a fit of rage…Feelings of crime are part of people’s psyche. So, they like the subject.” Best-selling author ‘Pattukottai’ Prabhakar sounds less ominous. “Crime makes sensational headlines in newspapers and people eagerly read them,” he says.
“The interest extends to crime novels too.” Chew on this: the first crime novel in Tamil was written by a woman — M Kodhanayagi Ammal — when novels were just making their appearance. In the 1940s, when the comic exploits of Thuppariyum Sambu and Digambara Samiyar caught the imagination of the public, Tamilvanan introduced the detective archetype — dark glasses, black hat and all — to them. ‘Mr Sankarlal’ was our own Holmes/Poirot, who visited foreign climes to solve baffling mysteries. The best tribute, perhaps anecdotal, came to Tamilvanan at the time of his death, when “a police officer wanted to know whether ‘Mr Sankarlal’ would be attending the funeral.” Asokan brings out reprints of Tamilvanan’s novels on his birth and death anniversaries and they are a sell-out.
Then are other writers — P T Sami, Siranjeevi, Medhavi, Pushpa Thangadurai, Javar Seetharaman… Opinion, however, is unanimous that crime writing in Tamil truly arrived with Sujatha. His Kolaiyudhirkalam published in 1981 is acknowledged as a masterpiece.
His detective duo, Ganesh and Vasanth, make one of their best appearances in the novel. “Sujatha brought sophistication and erudition to crime writing.” Asokan says.
Today, the list of crime writers is long and the output vast. Kannadasan Padhipagam publishes Tamil translations of Agatha Christie and James Hadley Chase for readers not conversant with English. Only the titles sound a bit funny.
On the flip side, Tamil crime writers, like their counterparts in other countries, rue their low literary status.
“Despite his prolific writing, Sujatha hardly won any literary awards for his crime novels,” Rajesh Kumar points out. Unlike literary or historical fiction, crime genre finds itself hovering outside the literary firmament.
Prabhakar is unfazed. “We write for the masses. We cater to popular taste. Our stories always have a message: ‘As you sow, so shall you reap’. Other things are irrelevant,” he says.
A plot develops
Most crime writers use newspaper articles to develop their plot. Rajesh Kumar, who has 1,750 novels under his belt, gives an insight.
He says: “I read an article in a newspaper about the replacement of a defective heart valve with a palladium valve in heart attack victims.
Palladium is an expensive metal and the valve costs around $10 lakh. The entire operation is conducted in secrecy and the identity of the patient is also kept secret.” On reading the report, the plot took shape in Rajesh Kumar’s mind: The daughter of an Indian millionaire is a heart patient. She is taken to the United States for the valve replacement surgery.
A criminal gets winds of it and follows her. He tries to kidnap and murder her to get his hands on the palladium valve in her heart.
The title of the novel, New Yorkil Oru Naal (A day in New York)…