Tag Archives: Literature

Journalism

The house within

Naiyer Masud’s multi-story Adabistan.

Our car comes to a halt a few metres from a main crossing in Turiaganj, also known as Victoriaganj. At first we cannot locate the house, so we climb up a few flights of stairs to a row of shops. There, a shopkeeper points straight ahead and, opposite us, behind shops packed together like a deck of cards, a haveli rises. From afar, it almost seems like a child’s sandcastle, with none of the frills commonly associated with havelis of North India. Instead, it seems to have been inspired by gothic architecture, two towers on either side of the conical façade rising up. Crescent-shaped swirls like half-drawn flowers are engraved on their arches, and perpendicular pillars are topped with football-shaped concrete blocks. A plaque above the arch of the left tower reads ‘Adabistan‘ – the abode of literature. As we enter, the haveli greets us with LIVE AND LET LIVE carved along the roof’s boundary wall.

Naiyer Masud’s childhood was spent in the rooms and passageways of Adabistan. ‘Ghar ke bahar nahin likh pate hain,’ he says (I am not able to write outside the house). But once in Adabistan it does not matter which corner he is in – the stories come to him. As a child Masud would tell his mother he was affected by jinns and she, fearing for her child, would say, ‘Ya to fakir ban jaoege ya pagal ban jaoge‘ (Either you will become a fakir or a madman).

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Journalism

Self-consciously pulp

The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp

Fiction, Vol II 
edited by Rakesh Khanna

translated by Pritham K Chakravarthy Blaft, 2010

In her Translator’s Note for Volume I of this series, Pritham K Chakravarthy wrote that the work, which was also the first publication by the Chennai-based Blaft, was ‘an attempt to claim the status of “literature” for a huge body of writing that has rarely ever made it into an academic library.’ These works of popular fiction, she explained, were typically not considered ‘serious’ or ‘meaningful’ enough to be translated. Her colleague and co-founder of Blaft, Rakesh Khanna, who started the publishing house in 2007, adds that the idea behind Blaft was to ‘capture different voices’. For instance, Charu Nivedita, a Tamil writer who wrote overtly sexual prose, was one among many writers whom Blaft began to translate and publish.

Blaft’s first project focused on translating works of popular fiction from the Tamil. For decades, these pulp novels have been sold in tea stalls and railway bookshops, and have been enjoyed by both men and women. In her translator’s note, Chakravarthy also writes about the culture of reading Tamil pulp in mid-1960s Madras, where in her household, ‘all the women at home’ read and shared popular magazines such as Anandha Vikatan, Kumudham, Dhinamani Kadhir, Tughlaq and others. As a child, she used to sneak copies given to her by her school driver. She writes that people would collect these stories and ‘would have them hard-bound to serve as reading material during the long, hot summer vacations’.

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