Lyricist and scriptwriter Javed Akhtar credits reading Ibne Safi's novels for helping him creating eternal celluloid villains like Gabbar Singh and Mogambo. Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap grew up wanting to be either Amitabh Bachchan or writer Surender Mohan Pathak. Actress Gul Panag even invited her favourite novelist Pathak to the premiere of her film Rann.
Besides Bengali detectives Feluda and Byomkesh Bakshi, Hindi, Urdu and Tamil pulp fiction heroes can keep many readers up at night turning pages of their slim detective novels. "Pocket books" or novellas, these became popular at book stalls at railway stations over 50 years ago.
Publishing houses are now giving the books fresh airing. Westland, along with Blaft, has published four translations of Ibne Safi's Jasusi Duniya series. Ibne Safi, the pen name of Asrar Ahmad, was once described as "the only original writer in the subcontinent" by Agatha Christie and wrote 125 novels in his lifetime.
Back in business
Says Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, who has translated the titles into English from Urdu, "Ibn-e-Safi provided humour, fast action and later invented some of the most bizarre characters in Urdu literature. And his hero (the Oxfordeducated Col Faridi) was all that young people of that time desired - a man of action, intellectual, aristocratic, amateur yet highly professional, apparently all knowledge was his province. And he wasn't interested in sex. So, a truly superhuman type with a great lot of humanity."
Says his son Ahmad Safi, "'Abbu termed Faridi his dream hero. Faridi was a complete personality, over the years this character developed in such a way that he was very careful in writing about him. One small mistake and the fans would go berserk."
Adds Bilal Tanweer, who did The House of Fear (Khaufnaak Imaraat, first published in 1955) based on Safi's spy and crimefighter hero Imran or X-2, for Random House, "Many writers have compelling plots, but Ibn-e Safi wrote prose, which was literary yet accessible."
Pranav Singh of Ponytale Books has published English versions of Sunil Gangopadhyay's Kakababu Adventures and Suchitra Bhattacharya's Adventures of Mitin Mashi, of the Third Eye Detective Agency and who surfs the Internet, makes extensive use of her mobile phone, is adept with Sudoku and always ready to rush to the scene of action. She is assisted by her chess-playing, school-going niece Tupur.
Highly prolific
Says Sudarshan Purohit, "Hindi pulp is not as popular today as it was in the 80s. Even today, people like Anil Mohan write a book every couple of months, so they manage to capture the zeitgeist. I wouldn't be surprised if books on the killing of Osama Bin Laden came out in the market in the next few weeks."
Coimbatore-based Rajesh Kumar publishes five novels a month. Says Blaft's Rakesh Kumar, "Rajesh has written around 1,500 books. Other Tamil authors have written hundreds of novels. In Hindi, it's hard to tell, because several authors use pseudonyms, with five people writing under the same name... but there are surely some very prolific writers. Bengali also has some madly prolific pulp writers."
Where are the books?
Archives are poorly maintained. Readers will be hard put to find a collection of their favourite writer's books. Pathak admits, "You won't even find 50 of my 275 novels."
Sudarshan explains, "There are hundreds (if not thousands) of Hindi pulp books that deserve a larger audience. Writers like Surender Mohan Pathak, Ved Prakash Sharma, Om Prakash Sharma, Parashuram Sharma, Gulshan Nanda, Kushwaha Kant, Colonel Ranjeet and dozens of others have been popular in their times. Anil Mohan writes a series of books about a professional thief and the heists he commits. And Agent Vinod, of course, was a pulp character before he became a movie." Time more publishing houses took up the challenge to give indigenous pulp fiction its place in the sun!
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/people/Pulp-fiction-is-back/articleshow/9564007.cms
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