Desi cool

With this book’s success,Blaft—a Chennai-based publishing house founded by Rakesh

Kumar Khanna,Rashmi Ruth Devadasan and Kaveri Lalchand-found an impetus to their mission of making regional pulp fiction mainstream. The book,translated by Pritam Chakravarthy,captured the minds of readers with tales of mad scientists,vengeful goddesses,murderous robots and scandalous starlets.

“India has a rich treasure of nearly 100 years of pulp fiction writing. But these are often looked down upon and branded as time-pass literature,” says Chakravarthy. She had grown up on a heavy dose of Tamil pulp fiction,till she moved to “hybrid literature” (as Khanna puts it). It’s the US-bred Khanna—married to Devadasan—who prodded Chakravarthy to rediscover the joys of such writings as well as translate them. “I was always interested in those posters in psychedelic colours at tea shops and pictures in popular magazines,” says Khanna,who can’t read Tamil.

Initially,Blaft was engaged in scouring the pulp fiction-rich South Indian literature,and finding the best and the juiciest to be translated in English. They have even published a collection of folktales from Tamil Nadu called Where Are You Going,You Monkeys?. But with their latest release—Surender Mohan Pathak’s The 65 Lakh Heist,translated by Sudarshan Purohit—they have repackaged the most-selling book by the “King of Hindi Pulp”.

“We didn’t want to be known just for Tamil translations. That’s why when Purohit showed interest,we asked him to translate Pathak’s book,” says Khanna,who has translated Charu Nivedita’s Zero Degree in collaboration with Chakravarthy. “We want to do translations of more regional literature from other parts of the country,” adds Lalchand.

Translating the books poses myriad challenges,the main being able to keep the flavour of the original writing. “Apart from this,we also have to keep in mind the individual style and the flavour of each author’s writing,” says Chakravarthy. While translating Pathak’s book,Purohit visited him after tracking the author through his Orkut fan club. The choice of which book of Pathak he should translate became easy with Purohit picking up the bestselling author’s most popular book.

The five-book-old Blaft is dreaming big,enthused by the fabulous response to their books. They have set much wider goals of eventually branching out into comic books,graphic novels,children’s books,non-fiction,textbooks,how-to manuals,encyclopaedias,and even kitchen appliances. So it’s not surprising that their to-be-released list runs long — Hindi Pulp Covers: The Art of Shelle features 35 postcards by Mustajab Ahmed

Siddiqui aka Shelle; TyPoCiTy by Vishal Rawley is a pictorial survey of typography and design found on signboards,taxis,buildings,tiffin dabbas,and in other public spaces of Mumbai,Moonward,a graphic story in five parts by Appupen alias George Mathen; and Tamil Pulp Fiction Volume 2 translated by Chakravarthy. Parallel to the plans of widening their publishing activities run their efforts to improve their distribution in India and abroad.