For those of us, who follow the works of Indian writers writing in English, this year has been phenomenally providential. There have been three major releases so far Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie and the recent Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh. Each writer is a literary heavyweight in her own right but none has received so much media attention as Amitav Ghosh.
Gone are the days when Amitav Ghosh used to be published by the venerable Ravi Dayal. Most of his books then used to be released quietly, without much ado, at the most allowed an academic response in one of the few serious newspapers (as the content would hardly arrest the attention of non-serious readers of fiction).
Not so any more. With a well-known publisher talking over the literary rights, Amitav Ghosh has now been ordained with the mantle of Indian fiction’s most printable face. Since the past few weeks so much of print and air-space have been accorded to Sea of Poppies that people who follow Ghosh’s literary trail quite closely know all that’s there to know about the book and can hold forth in a party conversation without even turning a single leaf.
This leads me to wonder, how beneficial media excess is after all, if it leads us away from the real thing. All said and done, the writer needs to reach out to his readers through his works. Media can facilitate that process to a certain extent but should restrain itself from going into an overkill. Honestly speaking, I do not want to read any more interviews of Amitav, nor do I want to read any dust-jacket-based hastily-cobbled-up review of the book. Simply put, I want the BOOK now to talk to me. Others please step aside, will they?
