Mr R Gopalakrishnan of the Tata Group recently did this story on Corporate Novels for the Economic Times. The article is a great recall of all the “Corporate Novels” that have been written in recent times.  In this story called Mixing Business With Pleasure, they have traced authors from corporate India who have penned their novels with stories that somewhere resonate with their experiences.  While it is fiction, almost all of them have perhaps been triggered off by some incident or character(s) they have encountered for real. This probably is the formula for realistic fiction that the readers have appreciated generously as well as the sales figures of all these novels will vouch for.  I feel honored that Mr Gopalakrishnan is aware of my novels – but I will feel better if I know that he read them as well.

Only one correction – in my case the article mentions my previous employer and designation.  I currently work for Wipro Ltd as the group’s  Chief Learning Officer. Over to the actual article.

Advertising and cricket come together with a bang in Anuja Chauhan’s novel, with The Zoya Factor launching into a romance with a cricket captain who sounds suspiciously like Dhoni. In the six months since its release, the 500-page book has sold over 20,000 copies and the film rights have been bought by Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chilli Entertainment.

Chauhan, who is from Meerut and graduated from Miranda House, is now working on her next novel, which is about ‘a small town girl who comes to the city.’ “Advertising is very limiting, with its 30 second restrictions. The best thing about writing fiction is that there are no limits,” says Chauhan.

The creative side of advertising has always tended to produce novelists, script writers and lyricists. Some hold on to their jobs, like Chauhan, while others move out. “People who join the profession are those who want to express themselves in some way,” says Jaideep Varma, who quit advertising after 12 years to become a full-time writer. “But then they realise that advertising is not going to lead to any kind of self expression. That’s why you find so many ad professionals moving into other creative areas.”

In Local, Varma’s debut novel, the hero is a fresher in a Mumbai ad agency who sleeps in local trains after work — an interesting idea which, alas, doesn’t actually work. The parts set in the ad agency, however , work quite well, which proves that it helps to have some experience of what you’re writing about.

Abhijit Bhaduri , Human Resources (HR) director of Microsoft India, has chosen to spin his novels around the HR profession rather than any particular industry. A graduate of XLRI, Bhaduri set his first novel, Mediocre But Arrogant, in the ‘Management Institute of Jamshedpur’ , from where his hero graduates to land his first job in HR.

His second book, Married But Available is about the protagonist’s early years in Balwanpur Industries, an Indian company that’s been taken over by a multinational. The book is sprinkled with HR gyan and Bhaduri, who has worked with Tata Steel, Colgate and Pepsico, says it gives his characters credibility: “The professional and personal lives of my characters aren’t separate, they’re wholly meshed.”

One of the biggest selling Indian novels of all time is Anurag Mathur’s The Inscrutable Americans, written at the fag end of the license raj, when the middle class Indian dream was to immigrate to the USA. Utkarsh Rai, managing director of Infinera India, published a collection of Hindi short stories titled Reteela Safar after returning to the country ten years ago. “It was a theme people could relate to in those days,” he says. “Now the focus has shifted to Indians in India rather than Indians abroad.”

The big fans of the corporate novel today are Indians who are not into serious literature. They once had to look to writers like Arthur Hailey for industry-dramas but now have the option of picking up an Indian novel they can relate to. “Middle class Indians define themselves through their careers,” says Amitabha Bagchi, IIT professor and author of the novel Above Average. “They would naturally enjoy reading stories about the pitfalls of professional life.”

With liberal doses of romance, action and intrigue , some might say corporate novelists depict their work life to be far more exciting than it actually is. But one industry that always lends itself to juicy fiction is hotels. Four decades ago, Mani Sankar Mukherji wrote the best-selling Bengali novel Chowringhee, about the goings-on in a five star Kolkata hotel as told by a maudlin clerk.

Now Advaita Kala’s written the delightful Almost Single, in which her sassy heroine, a guest relations manager in a Delhi hotel, ‘tolerates her job, hates her boss and bonds big-time with her friends.’ The book is replete with hilarious vignettes from hotel work-life and Kala admits she’s drawn heavily on her seven years of experience with the Oberoi group hotels and the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai. “My experiences were even more outrageous than what’s in the book. I’ve actually had to tone it down slightly,” she says.

Written between-jobs , Almost Single was accepted by every publisher it was sent to, and Kala finally settled on Harper Collins because she “connected with the editor” . The novel has since sold over 50,000 copies and along with The Zoya Factor, it’s set the ‘chick lit’ genre rolling in India. “Men will never admit to reading it,” laughs Kala. “At the Jaipur Literary Festival last month, there were lots of girls who came upto me to get their copy of the book signed, but there was only one guy. And he said it was for his girl friend.”

One man the new-gen corporate novelists owe much to is Chetan Bhagat, the author one who opened up the market for this genre. Bhagat’s debut book, Five Point Someone, was set in IIT-Delhi , his own alma mater, but since then, he’s moved to writing novels that are based on research rather than personal experience. “I enjoy the research,” he says. “I learnt so much about call centres while writing One Night and I used google heavily for cricket history in The 3 Mistakes Of My Life.”

Does the Deutsche Banker ever plan to write a novel set in the banking world? “Not while I’m still in the profession,” says Bhagat, categorically. Which leaves the field more or less open to HSBC’s Ravi Subramanian, who is currently working on another novel called Devil In Pinstripes, which features bank collection agents who drive customers to suicide. “It’s important that I stick to writing about banking,” he says. “I want to establish my corporate novelist pedigree before I get into other kinds of writing.”

And finally, how are the corporates who are the subjects of these novels reacting to the trend? Kala, who now works with Time magazine, says the hotel industry has been hugely supportive of Almost Single, laying out the red carpet wherever she’s had a launch: “The ITC Kakatiya in Hyderabad, ISTA in Bangalore, all hosted my launch events free. The staff there made me feel I’m one of their own.”

At HSBC, Malini Thadani, head of public affairs, was the one entrusted with onerous responsibility of going through the manuscript of If God Was A Banker prior to its publication. She wielded the censor’s scissors in six places, cutting out all but one reference to HSBC. “My job was to ensure the book didn’t damage the institution. In the end, we accepted it as an imaginative and entertaining work of fiction,” she says.

Once it was published, however, HSBC sportingly backed the novel, with country head Naina Lal Kidwai launching the book at Crossword. After all the coflict and tension, an altogether happy ending.

Read the article in Economic Times by Clicking Here

Is Fidelity Outdated? When you ask such a question on Valentine’s Day, it tends to grab attention. Anuradha Verma of The Times of India asks this question in today’s edition of the paper’s lifestyle section. Pritish Nandy, Suchitra Krishnamurthy, Rupa Ganguly have all shared their views. I got to share space with them because the title of my second novel ie Married But Available

Columnist and film maker Pritish Nandy says, “Fidelity is not the issue. Has never been. What is at issue is fidelity on demand. You cannot get fidelity on demand in a marriage or any other relationship for that matter. People are faithful when they love someone enough to give up every other option, every other choice. And trust me, despite the contempt with which it is treated by many people today, fidelity is still pretty much common. It is not that impossibility which we think it is.”

Actor Rupa Ganguly‘s view is that, “… due to exposure, people’s expectations have grown. They get dissatisfied, and this leads them to cheat. It’s a fast life, and everybody’s ambitious. Patience levels have dropped and that feeling called love is easily lost in this frenzy. One doesn’t stay in love for very long. However, while in a relationship, people still want to be loyal, and infidelity causes a lot of pain.”

Actor, singer, writer Suchitra Krishnamurthy says, “As some men get caught, more and more cases come to the forefront. Men can no longer afford to show off their conquests. They now have to hide their affairs. This could well mean fidelity is back as a lasting fashion statement. Infidelity is a reality. There are few relationships untouched by it. Today, women too are experimenting. There is a shift in consciousness.”

Here is what I had mentioned in the phone interview. Sometimes an edited version does not do justice to the idea.  Tell me what you think of it.

The explosion of social media has created many more shades of relationships. Social media is also redefining conversations that is the basis of all relationships. A relationship forms when conversations begin. Media is making multiple relationships happen. As the conversations evolve, the relationship evolves. Society changes when ever evolving conversations start creating new forms of relationships that have not existed before. Urban India has given a grudging acceptance to live in relationships and divorces which were frowned upon even a few years back. Movies and television serials are getting more comfortable showing a spectrum of human relationships that even a few years ago would have been taboo. Think of films like DevD (read more here) which is a contemporary take on a love story. Or more recently the film Ishqiya. They depict relationships that exist comfortably in the shades of grey.  Fidelity as a notion has also been evolving from being black and white to shades of grey. The definition of fidelity is understood only when people choose fidelity despite choices being available.  Thoughts are free. We cannot control them. So it is certainly possible to feel attracted to a person. However to act on that thought is a choice people make. It is a bit like this popular painting which at first sight looks like one face but actually has nine different faces built in. Just take a closer look. There is more to it than meets the eye at first glance.

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Read the article Is Fidelity Outdated on the Times of India site. Click here

Review of DevD at http://abhijitbhaduri.com/2009/02/devd/

Read about the film Ishqiya at http://abhijitbhaduri.com/2010/01/ishqiya/

Source of painting: http://www.facedetection.com/facedetection/misc.htm

I moved to Bangalore last October. To be interviewed for the city’s website mybangalore.com was the equivalent of the neighbors peeking over the fence to check how you are settling in. It just feels good. That is just how I felt when Dhanusha Gokulan spoke to me. To be counted on as a Bangalorean felt good. The conversation was free flowing – from books to my meeting with the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala, India. Just what was it like to meet His Holiness, she had asked. The fact that you do not know what to say to someone of his stature. Seriously, can you think of one really smart question to ask the Dalai Lama?   

Over to “namma Bengaluru” or maybe I should just say MyBangalore …

Bhaduri authored the book Mediocre But Arrogant which is a story about love and life in a Business School of the protagonist Abbey. The book opened at No 2 on the ndtv.com best-seller list in August 2005 and in September 2006, the book was No. 3 on the weekly best-sellers list of the Crossword Book Store chain in the Fiction category. He followed it up with another book Married But Available. Abhijit Bhaduri is a Human Resources professional who currently works as the Chief Learning Officer for the Wipro Group and is based out of Bangalore. Bhaduri who works full time at Wipro said that he shuffles work and writing, by taking time off during the weekends, and tiny breaks.

“Its over these long three day weekends that I work furiously. It depends, because when your working the break is not for more than 6 or 7 days. Besides, travelling is also a very good time to write. Sometimes I should think I should dedicate my books to the airline companies because of the long delays” said Bhaduri.

Speaking on how he decided to start professionally, he said, “I would always write. Letters to friends and family, looking back at it that was probably the initial encouragement. It was serendipity that I ended up writing for mass appeal.”

Bhaduri has an active online presence through blogs, twitter and other social networking sites. “I originally started a blog (see the first blog here) after publishing the first book because I wanted to get the word out to the people. I wanted to seek support and feedback on all of that because there is only so much you can write in your book”. The author is also a guest writer on various other blogs like the Dudseascrawls, (and tickledbylife.com) and a couple of my own blogs. He also wrote a corporate blog, and after combining the effort put together in all of the other blogs that he decided to create his own website.

The author’s first book Mediocre But Arrogant is according to him, about wanting to convey a funny idea of life. “Something like a tongue in cheek concept, it was easy because it’s a book on MBAs. The second book Married But Available was a continuation of the relationship. Besides, it was a catchy way of describing the scenario, and it has the ability to tickle people’s curiosity” added Bhaduri.

Speaking about the protagonist Abbey in Married But Available in fact in any way was autobiographical he said, “there are elements of me in the character Abbey and the physical aspects of the character is somewhat similar to what I do. But, Abbey is not me. For one, his marriage ends in a disaster! As an HR person there are dilemmas that Abbey has faced, and I’ve faced which are fairly universal experiences. The book has many different characters and there are many things with the character that I can relate with. The first book is set in Jamshedpur and I can write very authentically about the city because I’ve spend time there. If I had to base the book in Bangalore, I would be limited by my own experiences here because some of the elements like the physical aspects would be something that I should be able to write about authentically.” added Bhaduri.

Bhaduri’s books made it to Best Sellers list in the ranks of the likes of Amitav Gosh, Aravind Adiga among others. Reacting to being a part of some of the most prestigious authors in the country, he said, “It’s a tremendous feeling, and its some thing which encouraged me to work harder on my craft. These are people who I’ve always admired, and I don’t think I will have the audacity to compare myself to them. I would love to be able to write like them, but I can only write like myself.”

One of the most defining moments of his life was meeting Tibet’s spiritual head, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. “I love travelling, and I took a chance, and walked into Dharamshala. I was lucky that I happened to meet him. For security purposes, the guards there had taken away my camera, and I told him nobody would ever believe that I was here with you, and he asked his photographer to take a picture of the both of us together. He wrote a small prayer on a photograph of his which I was carrying with me. I must’ve been there for 10- 15 minutes, but you feel like you are in a trance when you meet something like him, you can’t think of anything to ask, and you don’t know what to speak at that point. You feel extremely small and you realise how little you know about the way the world works”

Abhijit is currently working on a non- fiction book, on how people should be hiring. He said, “Its not a handbook necessarily, avoiding the text bookish connotation. The book is about a business concept. For example, to hire a radio jockey’s for a popular breakfast radio show in the city, it requires a lot of skill because it is a super specialized job. Most people who do hiring in their jobs, don’t always know how they are expected to right the best. This book on hiring is fundamentally focused on corporate hiring. Every job is different.” He is also working on a murder mystery.

This year I had received a Valentine’s Day gift. Only I did not know I had got a gift. My second novel Married But Available had hit the bestsellers list of The Hindu newspaper – a leading daily newspaper in English in India. According to the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) 2008 The Hindu is the third most-widely read English newspaper in India (after Times of India and Hindustan Times) with a readership of 5.2 million. I have often wondered if commercial fiction and literary fiction should share a common bestseller list. Is that fair? Then again, can bestseller lists be made for different genres? Probably not. If so, we are back to where we started – lists are made across genres. So here are the bestsellers in fiction from the Hindu newspaper’s Vishakhapatnam edition dated 14 Feb 2009 (need I add that I love the people of Vizag for their great literary choice … see proof below.

Bestsellers : Fiction

1. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer – Atom Rs. 299

2. Slumdog Millionaire by Vikas Swarup – Black Swan Rs. 268

3. The Associate by John Grisham – Arrow Rs. 229

4. Married but Available by Abhijit Bhaduri – Harper Rs. 195

5. The Diary Of A Social Butterfly by Moni Mohsin – Random House Rs. 195

6. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin- Random House Rs. 395

7. The Murder Exchange by Simon Kernick – Corgi Rs. 262

8. Amazing Grace by Danielle Steel – Corgi Rs. 229

9. Lady Killer by Lisa Scottoline – Harper Rs. 282

10. Opium Clerk by Kunal Basu – HarperCollins India Rs. 295

The Hindu reviewed my novel Married But Available in todays literary supplement. I get a little worried about the book being featured in a literary review. I think there is a thin dividing line between literary fiction and commercial fiction. I believe Married But Available and the first novel Mediocre But Arrogant are both mass market fiction with no literary pretensions or capabilities. Here is the review by Sheila Kumar in The Hindu newspaper of 4th Oct 2009:

“Abhijit Bhaduri follows up his first novel Mediocre But Arrogant with this ‘MBA’ and warns that another MBA (Middle-Aged But Active) may yet be in the offing. Chetan Bhagat opened some kind of floodgates and this genre (IIT lit? MBA lit?) is what the waters are bringing in.

Plain language

Bhaduri gets off to a sluggish, even disjointed start, then gets into his groove gradually. His groove is his book’s groove, of course, and it’s a story of a management grad, his wine, women, song and career, not necessarily in that order. Bhaduri uses plain, unvarnished, unpretentious if unstylised language, communicating straight to the reader and infuses his tale with a strong autobiographical tone. While the book, the story, could have done with some amount of literary flourish, this, too, is literature, as the aforementioned Chetan B has shown us.

And so, Bhaduri’s hero, Abbey passes out of IIM, Jamshedpur, gets into Balwanpur Industries, works at the township, chafes at the fishbowl existence he has to live there out of necessity, marries, gets estranged from, romances a woman or two, and slowly climbs up the corporate ladder. There is no discernible line of wit in the book; at best it is a collection of puerile jokes; the IIM gang comprises the usual suspects; the career climb is predictable, the women all coalesce into one another, come and go without leaving much impact. So what is the leavening factor in this ‘MBA’, a tenuous title at best? It’s lessons learned on the job which Abbey/Bhaduri imparts in a chatty tone that loses no relevance in the telling.

Human Resource/Human Capital Practice/Personnel Management, whatever the term du jour is, it’s a fast moving track, creative and exciting, a track where you think as you run. To that extent, Bhaduri’s case histories with their solutions, make for interesting reading. The way Abbey handles the enforced VRS scheme initiated by the MNC that takes over Balwanpur Industries, is both informative and entertaining.

Abrupt end

And then, at the end of the book, Bhaduri seems to revert to type… he ends as he begins, i.e., with a jerky conclusion, a needless death and an abrupt dropping of curtain. Who knows, maybe he’ll rectify this in his third MBA. Stranger things have been known to happen.”

View a hi-resolution image of the cover of Married But Available designed by Shuka Jain

There is a quaint little bookstore in Gurgaon, India called Quill and Canvas run by Shobha Sengupta and her husband Vivek. It is what you would expect your own cosy attic to be. Cramped but cosy, full of books of all genres, paintings by contemporary artists all existing cheek by jowl. I remember going there for a panel discussion with Sankarshan Thakur of Tehelka (http://www.tehelka.com/) the magazine that is credited with some sensational exposes, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta (media person and economist) and Amit Baruah is the Foreign Editor of Hindustan Times.

The panel was divided on whether the economic development in India was widespread enough to be inclusive. Paranjoy and Sankarshan were vehemently against giving a good report card to the economic agenda for India. Amit and I talked of the need to have a critical mass of development before the focus could be turned to distribution and inclusive growth.

 Yesterday I came across this piece for Hindustan Times newspaper dated May 25th 2009 written by Shobha. She talks about the dilemmas of categorizing books in a bookstore. The growing popularity of chicklit. The decline in writing standards and other troubles in a bookstore!

A tidal wave of chicklit books has flooded the Indian market. In the six-and-a-half years I have been in business, I haven’t seen anything like this. When we started off, we had a bestsellers’ section, then demand forced us to create a separate fantasy section and a year later a section on graphic novels was added. Now, I have two shelves for the chicklit section.

This variety of books is written by fun-loving and street-smart women and is meant for non-serious readers. Its readers are fed up of ‘depressing’, ‘erudite’, ‘powerful’ and ‘socialist’ novels of yesteryears. But those who love good literature cannot figure out why these books exist. My 20-year-old daughter once complained about their language and grammar. “Why do you stock such books, mom?” she asked. “I am in bijnas sweetie,” I said.

It was Chetan Bhagat who became a phenomenon with his Five Point Someone. Abhijit Bhaduri’s Mediocre But Arrogant came out in 2005 and in 2007 Advaita Kala’s Almost Single. In 2008 we had a deluge: The Zoya Factor (Anuja Chauhan), You Are Here (Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan) and Pink or Black (Tishaa). Then there were Those Small Lil Things (Rahul Saini) and Keep Off the Grass (Karan Bajaj).

For the uninitiated, here is a sample of the works: In his foreword, Saini writes: “I am basically Punjabi by nature AND MY ENGLISH SUCKS. BUT I WILL STILL BLOODY WRITE THIS BOOK!!!!” (emphasis author’s). Madhavan’s book cover is plastered by blurbs like ‘Get cosy with hot guy at pool party’, ‘Do not disturb: perfect make-out session in progress’. Dude, what’s happening?