Horror stories of Ansari Road

Ansari Road is widely known as the biggest publishing hub of India. It is named after the renowned freedom fighter of last century Mukhtar Ansari who was also a doctor and practised from Ansari Road. Toda,y this crowded road has more than 500 publishers, predominantly of Hindi books. It includes leading  Hindi publishers like Rajkamal and Vaani. English publishers like Oxford, Cambridge, UBS also have their outlets here. But there is a skeleton hidden in the by lanes of this historical road in the heart of Darya Ganj. It places Hindi publishing in the uncomfortable company of the oldest profession of the world  which thrives on from the kotahs of the notorious G.B.Road at a stone throw distance.

 India produces ( not publish) more than 75,000 books every year, including school and university text books. Barring academic books , 99% are good for nothing. Nobody reads them. In fact it is a horror story. Most of the Hindi books are on unreadable literature written in Sankaratised Hindi which neither anybody understands nor speaks in modern India. The other categories are literary criticism and PhD dissertations. These books are published out of vanity.

In urdu, a writer is known as sahibe kitab. One who has created a book. India has a long tradtion of books. Geeta, Mahabharat, Ramayan, Vedas and upnishads were written in prehistoric times. Kalidas produced immortal literature like Kumarsambhav in that period. Printing hadn't arrived. It was invented to circulate bible to the faithful. The books were handwritten and its copies were made. The gurus made their pupils learn manuscripts by heart. It was a fascinating world in quest of knowledge. But over a period of time, it has been a down the hill journey almost reeking of a scandal.

Bhartendu Harish Chandra corrected this situation by popularizing khari boli in place of the dialects which had no scripts soon after the 1857 war of independence, khari boli replaced the dialects like like maithili, bhojpuri and Avadhi. Tulsi Das made Ram into a god from a fictional character created by Valmiki many millennia ago by writing Ramcharitmanas in Avadhi which is a household treasure in most of the ritualisticHindu familes..

Coming back to our theme of Ansari Road horror, Hindi publishing is a scandalous racket with a criminal nexus between publishers, state government education departments and politicians. It reads like a crime thriller. Here are some choicest instances.

 

An author went to a popular pocket books publisher seeking some translation work. He gave him the English version of popular folktale Mulla Nasrudd ke karname running into 100 pages. Rs 3000 was promised for this work. The author-turned translator brought back the accomplished job before the deadline. The money was paid in all earnestness by the publisher. No agreements, no contract. Both seemed satisfied.

A few months later, the author spotted the published title of his translation. He picked up the a copy and flipped through the pages. To his utter shock, the credit of the translation was given to some Vikas Gupta. He called the publisher and shared his pain. The publisher was non-challant. He said, but I had paid you your translation charges

Isn't it?

That's fine but why Vikas Gupta. Why not me. I am the translator.

The cunning publisher was unmoved. he said, what's the proof that you did the translation. If you try to be smart, I will charge you for the infringement of copyright.

The translator was dumbfounded. He shared his pain with some friendly Hindi publishers. But everybody laughed it off. Thank god, you got the money. Just forget it.

Horror story 2

Another author-translator, a fan of Spanish writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, translated his monumenta work One Hundred Years of Solitude and tried to get it published. But he was told that it has already been translated. We published it.

Can I have a copy, the writer, asked?

No, it is sold out.

You must be having a record copy.

No we have withdrawn the translation.

But why?

Because it was not up to the mark.

I have done it. You will like it.

No we are not interested.

I also discovered a leading scholar got her Ph.D on her transkation into Hindi of the same book. But, no one was interested because  the copyright was with this publisher.

Horror story 3

Another scholar translated  Don Quixote, presumably, the first novel in any language written in Spanish man a couple of centuries ago. Took money from the Spanish embassy for the translation and published a few copies for vanity. There goes another greatwork down the memory lane.

Horr story 4

I worked for a leading publisher for a year in my lean days. He appointd me his chief editor. On day one, he handed me over a manuscript to edit but with a refrain. It has been written by a vice-chancellor. So you don't have to edit. If anything goes wrong, the vice chancellor will bear the brunt. We have taken money from him to lend his name on the publication. You just read the proof. I realized that I had become a proof reader after being the head of four media schools. I was also asked to hunt authors with big names. But they were not supposed to write the books. The manuscript will be generated with the help of internet and their name will be used. They will have to pay Rs 3000/-. The factotum who culled out matter from Google was also paid Rs 3000 each.

One day, I asked the owner-publisher, sir, what is all this. He said, he used to print calendars earlier but someone suggested that there was more money in publishing. So we graduated to books. Now we print just one copy, send it to state education departments, pay the minister through his staff and get the book approved for their libraries. In fact we don't supply copies. Just a bill of 300 copies. I almost fell from my chair.

Horror story five

A couple of years ago, my wife got fed up of my files and loose papers and threatened that if I didn't remove them, she would sell them at Rs 10 per kg. I sorted out pap0ers. they were my printed articles in Hindi and English in leading newspapers. I classified them subject-wise and put them in attractive files. Put my three-piece suit, picked up files and drove to Ansari Road.

I stopped the car in front of the first publisher. he asked me t come next week. I went to the next, he said he was not interested. I didn't lose pati8ence. The third one looked interested. He told his staff to bring files from my car. He tasted one of the files. Counted the number of files. They were 25. He said would Rs 4000 a piece would be ok. I hadn’t heard this six digit figure in my life. I brought the check and handed it over to my wife, saying that the raddi was sold for a lakh.

Today my allmira adorns 25 anthologies of my previous wrings in book format. I became an author overnight.