Surinder Mohan Pathak: The King of Hindi Pulp

Surinder Mohan Pathak looks every bit the kindly grandfather as he whips out family photographs and declares that anytime now, his grandson will order him to turn on the Power Rangers for him on TV. It’s only the books on the bookshelves behind him at his house in Delhi’s Krishna Nagar that give away his identity as the king of Hindi pulp fiction, with over 275 books to his credit. He rues, “Earlier, housewives spent their afternoons reading ‘jasoosi’ novels. Today, they watch serials. My wife sleeps at 1 am after watching all her television serials.”

Having retired over 13 years ago from government service, Pathak continues to write four months in a year, working nearly nine hours a day, churning out about three novels a year. “It’s the first 100 pages that take time, the rest of the story just flows.. it’s all about the resolution of the crime.” His book The 65 Lakh Heist (or Painsath Lakh ki Dacoity in Hindi, featuring popular detective Vimal) has been mentioned in the Time magazine among the all-time bestsellers and once, notoriously, a bank robber took tips from one of his crime novels.

His readership remains steadfast, but Pathak admits, “There are not too many new readers.” There are issues with publishing houses, who are not honest about returns, he says. Besides reading his favourite Jack Higgins and other detective fiction, he enjoys watching old Hindi movies. As for new ones, he says, “Sometimes, my son drags me to the multiplex. But, in between, I wish I had a torch so I could read a book.” Interestingly, he gives away all the books he has read and only keeps the ones that he hasn’t.

Having published his first book at the age of 23, while still holding a government job, he still enjoys penning the adventures of Sunil, a debonair and upright investigative journalist. “When I write about him, I feel it’s me I’m writing about. And sometimes, when I read my earlier works, I’m amazed at what I have written!”

New age filmmaker Anurag Kashyap grew up wanting to be either Amitabh Bachchan or Surender Mohan Pathak. Actress Gul Panag even invited her favourite novelist to the premiere of her film Rann. Recent English translations of his book, such as The 65 Lakh Heist and Daylight Robbery, have won him fresh fans. However, archiving is poor in the pocket book industry. Pathak admits, “You won’t even find 50 of my 275 novels.”

He’s open to Bollywood, but has never been keen on pursuing the life. He would rather they meet him on his terms, which he says may be happening soon… Let’s wait and watch!

He remarks, “Today’s English publishing houses can’t boast of a single bestseller, except Chetan Bhagat — it’s garden variety fiction but the lingo clicked.”

And, what is pulp fiction ultimately? He chuckles, “If literature is the wife, pulp fiction is the wh***!”

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-06-30/news-interviews/29721355_1_novels-book-fiction

‘Idiot’ is politically correct!

Anuradha Varma, TNN, Mar 21, 2010, 12.00am IST
Filmmakers win the battle with the censors for retaining risqué scenes, but dilute the dialogues in the subtitles, says Anuradha Varma


When Barbara Mori tells co-star Hrithik Roshan “Main ullu ki patthi hoon” in this summer’s release Kites, or when Dharmendra delivered his famous dialogue, “Kutte, main tera khoon pee jaoonga”, people all over the world could be reading it as “I’m an idiot” or “You’re a fool”.

Welcome to the world of subtitling… where filmmakers, who battle the censor board to get ‘objectionable’ scenes cleared, allow dialogues to be sanitised when it comes to subtitling. Says censor board member Nandini Sardesai, “As long as no word is inserted, there is no problem. The other day, I saw the word ‘shit’ written as ‘s***’… we wouldn’t have objected to that!” Vinayak Azad concurs, “It’s common sense, isn’t it? If it’s in the approved dialogue, why can’t it be in the subtitles? It’s self-censorship.”

Defends a spokesperson at HBO, “Some words or slang may be mild, but not read so proper, hence these are further edited in the subtitles to suit the sensibility of the medium.”

Most viewers are used to finding even words like “bitch” (Kambakkht Ishq) changed to “witch” or “jerk” turned to “idiot”. Says freelance writer Manoj Saral, “We automatically tone down abuses. For instance, ‘bastard’ will become ‘stupid, idiot or fool’ or a Hindi ‘gaali’ will be written as ‘Shucks!’ For the Middle East audience, even the word ‘jehad’ has to be changed to ‘righteous war’.” For Dev D, director Anurag Kashyap sat through the process, and tried to retain the spirit of the scenes.

Besides the demands of catering to a world audience, with regions like the Middle East that insist on conservative dialogues, tacky subtitles are also a result of the disorganised nature of the business. Comments filmmaker Pritish Nandy, “The people who do subtitling in India are not exactly conversant with English. They are good with Hindi, the original language of the film.”

Agrees Saral, “Anyone with a working knowledge of English can enter the field. A film is sometimes subtitled for Rs 1,000.” Says Devbrat Das of Words India, “For companies, it can be between Rs 5,000-Rs 50,000.”
Adds MS Sutar, of Future Works, in the business for nearly 35 years, “People like Ashutosh Gowarikar and Aamir Khan go into the details of the subtitles, but most don’t. We are regularly asked to do the job in 24 hours as the filmmaker wants to send his movie for a film festival.”

Explains Pritish, “We always subtitle a censored print. So there are no problems. We take a serious interest in subtitling our films when we send them to international film festivals or to overseas distributors. In fact, our overseas sales agents often work with us on the subtitling to ensure that the nuances of every region, every culture are correctly taken care of. However, in India, our distributors and those who lease the rights to our films take charge of subtitling and we allow them to. If they want our intervention, we work along with them. If they don’t, we let it be.”

There are filmmakers who retain the language, like Madhur Bhandarkar. He says, “My associate director oversees the subtitling process. From Chandni Bar to Jail, I have stuck to the dialogue, including abuses. For Traffic Signal, we worked with writer Nasreen Munni Kabir, so the scenes were accurately interpreted.”
Ishqiya director Abhishek Chaubey admits that it’s commercial considerations that ultimately rule. Having worked on Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara, he says, “We had to tone down profanities. An ‘adult’ film like Ishqiya would get a ‘15 and above’ rating in the UK and we don’t want to lose that audience.” However, between the rush for the box-office and film festivals, viewers are often left with tacky subtitles. Says Abhishek, “We had our subtitles once the script was locked, a year before the film released. Directors should get involved in their films. I’ve seen the audience in Europe lose interest because of the bad subtitles.”
Till then, it’s the audience that has to make do with watered down versions of films!

 Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/5705833.cms