Novel written with a brush

Can a novel be written with a paint brush. Pick up the latest novel of the amazing author Mohan Deep who has a creative imagination and a mercurical pen. His latest offering 'Colour Me Rich' is a tour de force of today.

Its setting is the art world of Bombay. And the canvas is the most popular rendezvous Samovar near Flora Fountain also known as Kala Ghoda because of a statue nearby. I still remember meeting  the illustrious editor of India M.J.Akbar in 1979. I had known him from INS ( Indian Newspaper Society ) days where we rubbed shoulders many a times in the first floor corridor. His Sunday magazine office and my room of Onlooker fortnightly of which he was the first editor were next door neighbors. He was  followed by S. Venkatnarayan and of course, the prodigy editor D.M. Silvera who graduated me from a non-descript Hindi journalist to a successful investigative reporter in English were next door neighbours. I had become an editor at 31 and a film trade magazine had done a snippet highlighting a fact, I was unaware of, that I was the youngest editor. Akbar made a caustic remark that I had beaten him on that score. I took it as a compliment.

It was surprising to his innumerable fans that he decided to join BJP. May be to be enter the upper House of Indian parliament. But BJP gave him a raw deal. Congresshas treated journalists-turned politicians like Chandu Lal Chandrakar, Srikant Varma and even Rajiv Shukla but with one exception Raj Babbar who is still waiting in the wings for his turn.

Coming back to Mohan's novel, it talks about the young dreams in the world of arts. He has called this slim 187-page novel a love story. But it is a tribute to the young generation which has hit India as never before. I agree it is  a story of the now. Artists are dreamers. They use colours to paint them on paper. Not all of them adorn the walls of filthy rich people. But they find some round the corner gallery to showcase their work. It is astonishing how the galleries have grown like mushroom in Delhi and each has an exhibition on  any given day. The today's engagement column has maximum entries bout these exhibition. The grapevine is that TOI charges money even for this column but I don't believe that every painter has that kind of money.

There is a sad news. Mohan Deep is fed up of writing biographies. He has also penned the life stories of Madhubala, Meena Kumari and Rekha whom he prefers to call Eurekha, a pun on eureka!.

On a parting note, I strongly feel that Mohan should do a comprehensive novel on the dark side of Bollywood. How the dreams of millions are crushed. The gharana system has gone but not the stardom. There have been many novels on Hollywood. Bollywood  also deserves one. And who can do a better job than Mohan Deep..