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The publisher as storyteller
When David Davidar, the chief executive and publisher of Penguin Books, India, delivered the first S. N. Kumar Memorial Lecture recently, he spoke of `The World of Publishing', with only a modicum of storytelling he will soon be better known for. Many in the audience, which comprised mainly members of the three active organisations that Kumar had helped found, felt that Kumar would have enjoyed a bit more of storytelling than a reminder that books are also business.
Kumar's association with publishing was through a world he loved, the world of books, and the three associations connected with that world that he helped establish: the Madras Library Association, the Madras Book Club and the Ranganathan Centre for Information Studies. That all three would turn out to be more active than most such associations was entirely due to Kumar's drive that ensured at least one meeting a month of each, at his favourite venue, THE Connemara — NEVER the Taj Connemara. But at every one of those meetings, the ever-smiling Kumar had a ball, either telling stories or getting others to tell him some, all of them far removed from the serious business of the day.
I am sure he would have been more delighted to hear David Davidar speak of his first book, "The House of Blue Mangoes", which no doubt, will reflect the roots of the author in Tamil Nadu's Blue Mountains and once-gracious Madras.
Pre-release rumours speak of its publishers abroad considering it as likely to be a better book than Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy" and that, appropriately, the advances have been in six figures — Sterling.
But whatever the truth of those stories, I can hear Kumar asking, "Why blue mangoes" and chortling when he's told, "Why, neelam, of course!" The book will be launched in Madras on January 19, 2002.
S. MUTHIAH
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