The Bestseller She Wrote (2 page)

‘Balls!’ This time the voice was louder. It sounded out like a whipcrack. ‘It’s a book for god’s sake, not a product.’

Aditya stopped as heads turned. The sound had come from the right hand corner of the auditorium. If anyone had missed it the first time, they were sure to have heard it now.

From where the sound had emanated, stood two young girls. One of them looked quite embarrassed, which was enough for Aditya to confirm that it was the other one who had spoken.

‘Sorry?’ he questioned, upset at being rudely interrupted. ‘What was that?’ The girl had been a bit too loud. Maybe she didn’t realise it, but now, for him, it was a matter of his fragile male pride.

Neither of the girls responded to Aditya’s question. After what seemed like thirty seconds of uncomfortable silence, the girl who had made the comment stood up. All eyes were on her, including those of the outraged academics sitting in the front row.

‘Pardon me, Mr Kapoor, but a book is not a product,’ she spoke up. Despite her ostensible apology for her impropriety, she didn’t need any coaxing to stand up and speak. ‘A book is an expression of an author’s creativity. Do not demean it by calling it a “product”. We respect you as a good writer, as a successful professional and as a senior from our campus, but that does not mean that anything goes.’

A few whispers went up in the auditorium, gradually escalating into chatter.

‘Young lady,’ Aditya began, the quiver in his voice quite apparent. Camouflaging his thoughts had never been his strength. His face had gone red with anger. He was not going to be shown up by a young kid.

‘You are correct, but only partly. A book is not a product when an author is writing it. At that moment it is a dream. It is the purpose of existence for the author. But the moment you put a price tag on it and place it on a shelf in a bookstore, it becomes a product.’

He looked at the others in the audience and after an intentional pause, added, ‘Otherwise why even bother to sell it? Give it away for free.’

He was angry, but he had learnt that in this day and age of social media, being rude and arrogant to the audience, especially in public, was a recipe for disaster. Someone might just record it and upload it on Facebook for everyone to see, putting him at risk of brand erosion.

‘Sure,’ the girl said, ‘but there has got to be a difference between peddling a bar of soap and selling a book. A book is a lot more personal, a lot more involving. A book is not a movie. It may be entertainment, yes, but not cheap entertainment. The romance of a book is lost by the in-your-face promotion that you guys do. In any case, most of the new Indian authors write rubbish. In the name of romance, trash sells. And on top of it, you guys call a book a product! It reveals a mindset of mediocrity. Push any book, however mediocre, through an aggressive sales campaign and you have a bestseller.’ She was worked up now and sounded irritated.

Aditya forced a smile. Blood was still flooding his cheeks, rendering them pink. ‘Mediocre? Young lady . . .’ he said, catching on to the last point and conveniently ignoring the rest. He looked around the room. Everyone was waiting for his response. ‘I am sure you haven’t read my books?’

Seeming a bit embarrassed, the girl nodded in agreement.

‘Read them,’ Aditya spoke with forced humility, ‘and then call them mediocre if you want to. Half the people, who have an opinion on current Indian authors, haven’t even read them.’

He raised his right hand and pointed directly at her. ‘And as far as marketing my books is concerned—it’s simple. If I spend a year writing a book, I will leave no stone unturned in making sure that everyone knows about it, and buys it. I don’t mind my books adorning bookshelves as long as the bookshelves we are referring to are not in bookshops, but in people’s homes.’

The girl just looked at him without saying a word. Her friend sitting next to her held her hand and pulled her down. ‘Sit down,’ she whispered.

‘If after reading my book, you hate it, please write to me. I can’t refund your time, but to make up for it, I will gift you ten books of your choice. Think of it as kind of a money-back guarantee.’ He attempted a smile.

‘And just to complete the discussion on promotion of books by authors, all I have to say is that after giving it their everything, an author cannot just sit back and hope that the world will appreciate his or her effort and automatically flock to stores to buy the book. So it has to be brought to the customer, quite like a product, with full focus and energy. If you still don’t agree, I am happy to engage with you offline.’ He smiled triumphantly at the audience, looked at the girl again and asked, ‘Deal?’

The girl smiled, and gave him a thumbs up. He reciprocated the gesture. Truce was called. However, the interjection had a terminal impact on his speech.

He stopped his lecture soon thereafter and they broke into a Q&A.

2

I
T IS OFTEN
said that what is more depressing and miserable than being an author is being married to one. An author often leads a lonely life. Books, research, computers and hours of typing away in isolation, can often drive a wedge between an author and his or her immediate family. Being an author’s partner is not for everybody. It needs someone with resolve and patience, someone like Maya, who held Aditya’s family together.

He loved her, for she was different. He had met her when they were in their first term at IIM, but they had not started dating till they were well into their second year. He was smart, extremely intelligent and arrogant—quite a contrast to his other classmates from semi-urban India who were fairly subdued and nerdy. He had worked on his attitude to shake off his small-town complex and compete with the bullies from the metros.

She was equally bullheaded and tenacious. This had kept them away from each other, initially. When they did start going around, many in the batch wondered what it was that glued them together. Even Aditya and Maya didn’t quite know.

Soon the carefree days of college were over. Maya got placed with a Switzerland-based bank. Aditya too joined a European bank. After a year, in 2000, they got married. Maya, soon after, was transferred to Hong Kong and Aditya followed suit. For a few years both of them worked hard in Hong Kong, chasing their professional dreams. Maya’s career was on the ascendency, at a pace faster than Aditya’s. Everything was running smoothly for them.

And then three incidents changed the course of their lives.

Aditya lost his job in 2008—collateral damage because of the global financial market meltdown. His first book, on the life of an engineering college student, released the same month. The book became a runaway hit. Both these incidents coincided with the birth of their son, Aryan.

Lack of help to manage and take care of the newborn, and unwillingness of either of their parents to shift to Hong Kong to help them out added to Aditya’s frustrations with the job loss. This was coupled with his inability to promote his book. They decided to relocate to Mumbai. Maya, despite her scorching corporate career, had always wanted to do something more meaningful in life. She too felt the move would give her the opportunities she desired.

She gave up her job to focus on family. She stayed at home for a year, before taking up an assignment with the Dhirubhai Ambani International School (DAIS). Apart from teaching twelfth graders, she also managed the group’s social initiatives; most of them directed at improving literacy levels of the urban poor in Mumbai, particularly the slums of Dharavi. Maya’s involvement in the project as a Lead changed her approach to poor children. Educating them became a mission in her life; a passion. She was the wife of a rock star author. Yet rather than bask in his reflected glory, she chose to chart her own course.

*

Maya was home that night when Aditya called her after the lecture at IIM Bengaluru. He had just checked into Hotel Vivanta by Taj on MG Road.

‘Hey baby,’ Aditya began.

‘Where have you been, Adi? No call, no SMS.’

‘Just checked in. I was with people throughout the day; couldn’t call.’

‘Comfortable room?’

‘Hmm . . . it is nice. Nothing beats the Taj. What say?’

‘I would say, nothing beats home. And when you are away from home . . . honestly, I don’t care.’ She laughed into the phone. Aditya laughed too. He loved to hear her laugh.

‘When did you get back?’ Aditya asked.

‘Early. I came in by 4.30. I had a conference call with the global sponsors of the project in Dharavi Ward 3 at 6.00. So I wanted to prepare for that.’

‘Oh yes, yes, I completely forgot about that.’

‘Both Aryan and I have stopped expecting you to remember anything but your books,’ Maya faked anger. ‘I wonder how Tim manages to get you to do his work.’ Tim Xavier was Aditya’s boss at National Bank.

‘Tell me, how did it go?’ Aditya asked.

‘It was good. They might contribute a million and a half for the project,’ Maya revealed happily.

‘That’s nice. Mrs Ambani will be thrilled. Not that a million and a half means a lot to her, but the project is getting global sponsorship and recognition.’

‘True. Had dinner?’

‘Hmm. What’s Aryan doing?’

‘Fast asleep. Your son was missing you. He was tired today. Wanted you to put your leg on top of his and hug him when he went to bed.’

‘Aww. Why was he tired?’

‘Cricket practice, that too in the sun.’

‘Cricket practice is never fun in the shade. Let him grow up into a rough and tough man.’

‘Hmm . . . How was your lecture? And the crowd? Did people turn up?’

‘Oh! You should have been there to see. The auditorium was full. Every seat was taken. People were squatting in the aisle. Everyone was completely floored with my gyan.’

‘That doesn’t sound like anything new.’

Aditya laughed. ‘Oh, but you know, there was this idiotic bitch who . . .’

‘Language, Mr Writer,’ Maya interrupted him.

‘Yeah yeah, fine, Mother Teresa. There was this woman who was trying to rubbish what I was saying. She was being very condescending about Indian authors and book promotions. I took her head on and completely bullied her into submission,’ Aditya said and launched into an account of the entire discussion, albeit with loads of exaggeration.

‘My super intelligent baby,’ Maya teased him.

He laughed. The conversation continued for a few minutes, after which he bid her goodbye and switched on the television in the room. Finally when sleep did force him to shut his eyes, he didn’t bother to switch the lights off. In a hotel room, he always slept with the lights on and the television playing some meaningless channel.

Some habits just stay for life and this was one of them.

3

S
HREYA HAD JUST
changed into her nightclothes and snuggled into bed, a copy of John Green’s
The Fault in Our Stars
in hand. Hardly had she got herself comfortable and started reading the book when someone knocked on the door of her hostel room.

‘You there?’

‘Yeah! What is it?’ she yelled from her bed.

A couple of knocks followed.

‘Open the door, will you?’

‘Why the hell can’t you let me read in peace?’ said an irritated Shreya as she stomped towards the door.

The half hour before she went to sleep was unwind time for her. Unwind time as in trouble-me-at-your-own-risk unwind time. Nothing matched curling up in bed with a book. For Shreya, an ardent reader, a guy roaming in the aisles of a bookstore carrying a few books in hand was a bigger turn-on than someone lifting weights in a gym. A man needs to be judged by his reading quotient, she would often say.

‘Nerdy and well read are two completely different personality traits,’ Shreya would often argue. ‘Nerdy guys are socially inept, well mostly anyway, whereas well read guys are intelligent, confident and great to talk to.’

Aditya Kapoor had impressed her initially. He had the magnetic appeal of a successful professional. The conversation in the auditorium had turned into a confrontation, and that was not something that she would have ideally liked, but Aditya was being too arrogant. He had asked for it.

Shreya’s love for reading went back a long way. Her parents had never got along. Constantly at each other’s throats, screaming and shouting at each other all the time, they never really worried about the impact it had on their daughter, who was still growing up. Every evening, the moment her mother came back from work, Shreya would retire to her room, book in hand. Books helped take her mind off the trauma in her real life. Her parents separated when she was ten years old and her mother went to live with a successful business tycoon.

‘Relationships with the right people always pay in life,’ her mother had said while explaining the change to Shreya. At times it pays even more than what you get from all that you learn at school. This was not said but implied and Shreya was quick to catch on.

‘What happened to you today? The director is very upset with you,’ Sunaina, started off the moment she walked in through the door. Sunaina’s hostel room was adjacent to Shreya’s and she was her closest friend on campus. She was taller than Shreya, leaner and dusky. Curly hair which she usually tied in a high pony, giving it a nest-like appearance, made her neck look attractive. Born to a Muslim father and a Malayalee-Hindu mother, Sunaina had spent a large part of her childhood in Dubai.