Tamil Pulp Fiction

Mad scientists, hardboiled detectives, sensuous starlets, murderous robots, vengeful goddesses, saucy heroines -- what they all have in common, Tamil Pulp Fiction. Accessibly priced and with lurid photoshopped cover designs, they sell at tea stalls and railway stations and has a huge avid readership.

When I was kid, my mother used to devour Ananda Vikadan, Kalki and Kumutham in stacks. If only I knew how much fun she was having, I would have surely not neglected my Tamil education.

The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction, is an effort by translator Pritham Chakravarty and publisher Rajesh Kanna to bring some of this to non-Tamil reading readership, which for all intents and purposes includes me. I read an extract of a couple of stories produced exclusively by Outlook magazine recently. What can I say? They were corny to the max, but delightfully inventive.

According to the Outlook exclusive, the first book in Tamil for popular readership appeared in 1869. Later, inspired by the 'penny dreadful' novels of post WW1 Britain, another crop of authors appeared. A 1933 guideline for writing commercial novels appeared in Sudhandhira Sangu thus (from Outlook):

1. The title of the book should carry a woman's name -- and it should be a sexy one.
2. Don't worry about the storyline. All you have to do is skilfully adapt the stories of (penny dreadful author) Reynolds and the rest. Yet your story absolutely must include a minimum of half-a-dozen lovers and prostitutes, preferably 10 dozen murders, and a few sundry thieves and detectives,
3. The story should begin with a murder. Sprinkle in a few thefts. Some arson will also help.
4. You can make money only if you manage to titillate. If you try to bring in social messages, forget it.

Of the two writers I have read, Subha is the penname of two writers, Suresh and Balakrishnan, who have been churning it out since the 80's. They are reported to have written 550 novellas, 50 longer novels, and more than 400 short stories, apart from screenplays for cinema and television. The other author, Rajesh Kumar, has been writing since 1968 and has to his credit 1250 novels and over 2000 short stories.

No time for lazybones in that industry!

Blaft