It is such a pleasure to see more and more Indian and Pakistan writers on the bookstands. As a youngster I grew up on a staple diet of western authors. A book by Indian authors usually meant a moral/historical story or - if it was an Indian expat author – a tale of woes faced by immigrants, expats or the confusion of their children growing up in foreign countries. No doubt books like Malgudi Days are incomparable and in a league of their own, but books like The Namesake and The Interpreter of Maladies simply seem to cater to the Western world’s curiosities about a rural India. Take for example “The White Tiger’ and one can’t help wonder why it has received the attention it has when, in a nutshell, it is about a driver taking advantage of his position and making off with his employers property. Does this not happen in the west with the Nannies of film stars selling photos to tabloids? Personal Trainers giving ‘their story’ about Pop stars to anyone who will listen and butlers writing books about their employment with the Royal family? The slew of Indian born western authors since the 1980s was simply painful to read for those humble readers in India that were merely looking for an interesting story to end the day with. Interspersed by these were the very commercial stories of authors like Shobha De and Kushwant Singh. Now however, there is a refreshing trend of moving away from these stereotypes and one is treated to books like the “The Pregnant King’ by DevDutt Pattanaik, Simoquin Prophecies by Samit Basu and the Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif. These books are a delight to read because they are imaginative and original without depending on the crutch of the west’s fascination for a ‘mysterious’ India/ Pakistan. Nor do these books depend on the over-hyped experiences of expats and their children’s shocked reactions to a ‘culture’ they never discovered. One book by an expat Indian author that managed to not be straddled with the expat stereotype was Arundhati Roy’s ‘The God Of Small Things’. A beautifully written book, it was a simple story told with great lyrical style. Most other expat Indian writers seem to be caught in a time warp, imagining the India that their parents left behind decades ago through some strange rose and underdeveloped tinted glasses!
