Krishna Shastri Devulapalli - How to Be a Literary Sensation: A Quick Guide to Exploiting Friends, Family and Facebook for Artistic Gain

There is this general lament that there arent enough humour writers in India. I disagree. Completely. I think every writer in India is a humour writer. Heres why.

If my editor is to be believed and I do mostly believe her, except when she says shes had only three drinks and the incident at the bar involving bouncers was not her fault at all about eleventy-four new books come tumbling out of the presses looking for shelves and would-be readers every month. And thats just from the four or five major publishing houses with hoity-toity English-sounding names, which are overrun by twenty-three-year-old Delhi kids between jobs.

A guy whos been in the publishing game for so long that he smells like lamination glue tells me that last year alone several hundred bookshops closed down and turned into fast-food joints and massage parlours but got all cagey when it came to sharing the addresses and phone numbers of the latter.

Add to this the steady depletion of literature-and book-related space in newspapers, which may or may not have something to do with a corresponding increase in space for Sunny Leone.

Then, above all, there is the reader. Or should that be: where is the reader? Except for the guy who writes about the undying odour of the wind passed by a certain tribe of people in the old days and the fellow who writes about sinister conspiracies involving deposit challans, or the other guy who has recently proved via a movie based on his book that IIM is Indias best dance school, whos buying anyones books?

In essence, anyone bothering to write in such a scenario has to be a humour writer. That includes even the ones writing about incest between conjoined twins born to a couple, one schizophrenic and the other quadriplegic, in Kerala during Partition.

So, if youre clacking away on a computer using only one finger, with the other fingers free to explore your orifice of choice, or waiting for a response about your manuscript from the editor whos at the Jaipur Lit Fest in London (seriously, there is one, and apparently theyre planning a London Book Fair in Gurdaspur but I digress), or are wondering why your latest book that was released two weeks ago is available as a giveaway with two bars of Cadburys Dairy Milk at a leading bookstore or are planning on writing your first book, an epic retelling of Mahabharata from Sitas point of view you, my friend, are the modern-day equivalent of Bozo, the red-nosed buffoon wearing Size 28 shoes, about to be slapped on his rear with two flat bats held together to make the maximum noise.

Whom are you writing for? Where are they going to display your book? Whos going to buy your book? Is your editor real or a 3D hologram? Wheres the space to review the book? What is Sunny Leones mobile number? And what on earth is this cart that keeps flipping that everyones speaking about?

That said, if someone is actually reading this, it means one of four things: you are related to me, HarperCollins India has sent you my bestselling book as a giveaway, a copy of my book landed on your head when you were browsing through Fifty Shades of Grey in a bookshop that was having a Going-out-of-business sale and you took that as a sign from the gods to buy it or, most likely scenario, you are an acquaintance of my mother-in-laws.

Whatever the case, a while ago, when my publishers sent me a dozen copies of my first novel in lieu of royalty towards my second novel, I took the hint and purchased some nylon rope. Just as I was tying one end of it to a hook high up on our terrace, my editor walked in. She was on her way to Africa to run with the wildebeest or something like that and had come to Chennai to buy Kanjeevarams for her Tanzanian friends. Thinking that I was about to take the final step, she decided to thwart me in the only way she knew. By commissioning me to write a book.

In reality, finally fully aware my career as a writer was on the fast lane to nowhere, I was making a clothesline with the rope to hang up the large backlog of unwashed underwear that had accumulated over the last three years, and which Kasturi, our help, had outright refused to launder. But I didnt let on.

Why dont you try non-fiction? she said, as I went about my task undaunted.

Why? I said.

Coz thats what everyones reading these days.

So you think the time is ripe for me to fail at that, too?

Yes, she said. Not really. You know, youve been a designer of greeting cards, an ad guy, a cartoonist, a childrens illustrator, a novelist...

Model, I said.

You were? she said. She looked like she was holding something back. When? For what?

I realized too late that it didnt make sense to tell someone you wanted money from that you had once been the national face of a broad spectrum antifungal cream that you used on every part of the body other than your face. But I parried beautifully.

How much? I said.

What do you mean? she said.

You had to give it to her. If I was the DArtagnan of thrust, she was the Zorro of parry.

Advance? I said.

Tell you what, she said. Ill get you a didgeridoo on my way back.

Was she kidding? How did she know that my childhood dream was to have a ten-foot pipe to blow into?

Sold, I said.

And thus was born How to Be a Literary Sensation: A Quick Guide to Exploiting Friends, Family & Facebook for Financial Gain your standard revenge-for-profit book where I get back at everyone from my wife to my editor and the writers in between.

So have fun. Why shouldnt you? My editor is. She sent this SMS from the plane: The didgeridoo is from Australia, you moron, it read. Gotcha! Again!

THE WRITER BUSHWHACKS CREATIVE LIFE

Creativity seeing what everyone else has seen, and claiming its yours.