Think long rides in trains and buses. What is the easiest available option to entertain oneself on these journeys? Pocket novels, or pathu roobai novels, as they are more popularly known, are available aplenty in station platforms and petty shops. Made up of roughly 125 pages, pregnant with sultry sirens, hungry animals, humanoid robots, lustful murderers, black magic practitioners, larger-than-life cops and a super-catchy title, Tamil pulp novels have had a steady fan following for ages and still continue to reign supreme. What suffered a mild opposition in homes of the ‘well bred’ and was related to the reading interests of only auto drivers or porters in those days has now seen the prejudice-lines fade. More people are becoming aware of the fun element and the easy-reading-for-pleasure nature of Tamil pulp and are bingeing on them in their original and translated versions.
Rakesh Khanna, of BLAFT publications, says, “Pocket novel publishing is a big industry. I have seen many of these novels being stacked in tea shops and I have felt handicapped, whenever I saw the glossy covers of these novels. Since Chennai is increasingly becoming home to a lot of English fiction readers, we decided to translate pulpy novels into English and give them access to light fiction. Indian English publishing is very realistic in nature. On the other hand, pulp fiction has unimaginable action, fun and excitement. Pulp fiction writers make better business when compared to the mainstream authors.”
Rajesh Kumar, the famed pulp-fiction writer, feels, “The Tamil pulp industry is healthy now, what with old novels still being read and new publishers going in for reprints. I know a school teacher, who reads out ‘science news’ from my books to his students in his class. Some villagers have told me that the small doses of English, in my novels have helped them improve their language,” smiles the author, who writes on everything from history to crime to tearjerkers.
However, there are people like Arnika Nasser, who have faced many a trial and tribulation while leading the life of a pulp-writer. The author, who recently sued Shankar for having adapted a part of his Robot Thozhirchaalai on screen, sadly expresses, “A lot of ideas are being stolen from pulp novels. Some TV channel owners go to publishing houses in the city and buy 10 different pulp books and make a mega serial out of it. This is a dark time for us. Not many people read our books in Tamil. A lot of writers have vanished or been banned from writing. We are indeed suffering.”