New Delhi, December 9: When everyone, but everyone, is busy publishing a novel, why should publishers eschew writing fiction? David Davidar, editor at Penguin India, is still a trifle stunned at the eagerness with which his first foray into fiction has been seized upon by literary agents and international publishers alike.Edited by Vikram Seth and expected to be on the bookshelves in a year, Davidar's The House of Blue Mangoes inspired literary agent David Godwin's first sprint to New Delhi after he famously rushed here to snap up Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things four years ago.Davidar, 42, is predictably wary of disclosing the advance he received for The House of Blue Mangoes, saying it would detract from the merits of his book, but is more forthcoming on the biography of his novel thus far.Sent as a hesitant offering by a debutant writer called S.H. Jayakar, The House of Blue Mangoes immediately invited Godwin's interest, who effortlessly sold it to HarperCollins in the US and Orion in Britain two weeks ago (In India, of course, it will be presented by Penguin). It was only later, says Davidar, that Godwin found out the identity of the writer. Till then, only his wife and Seth had any inkling that the man who has nurtured so many Indian writers in last 15 years was himself evolving into one.The story, however, began a couple of years earlier. Davidar had penned a piece on his grandfather in a national daily, upon reading which Seth suggested that Davidar put pen to paper for a longer work. And so, Davidar sat at his table every morning from 4.30am till 6.30am for the next year and a half, till Seth took over and undertook the editing for the next six months.The House of Blue Mangoes tells the story of three generations of a South Indian family between 1899 and a few months short of Independence in 1947. Though it is not exactly autobiographical - ``I wrote an autobiographical novel at 20,'' the author laughs, waving away his intent to repeat that attempt - but the terrain it covers is reminiscent of the stories he heard in his family.Is that all it took? A gentle push from Seth? Davidar would prefer to term Seth the catalyst: ``But you don't set out to write a book, it's something you have to do.''
