Encouraging Emerging Talents: Year 4
First Proof: The Penguin Book of New Writing, Volume 1 began its life in 2005, with the expressed wish by the publisher, Penguin India, that it represented an attempt to "showcase emerging talent and writers who have enjoyed acclaim but not as wide a readership as they clearly deserve." In that inaugural volume Penguin took the decision not to publish or approach authors who had published more than two books, or those who had received exceptional notice with their debut works - the latter condition, for example, automatically ruled out an Arundhati Roy or Aravind Adiga. That particular opening book did indeed impress readers and reviewers with its exceptional collection of pieces and authors who tended to inhabit the lesser-lit spaces of Indian writing in English. Penguin additionally had hoped that First Proof would go on to be an annual anthology. First Proof: The Penguin Book of New Writing, Volume 4, published in 2008, offers convincing proof that it has indeed established itself on its own merit. Though originally envisaged that the collection would consist of short fiction, essays, reportage, travel pieces, memoirs and selections from works-in-progress, the volumes have tended to be divided into straight fiction and nonfiction sections, where the longed-for diversity in the genres have yet to be fully attained. That said, the volume makes for exciting reading, as one moves pleasurably among writers and authors who perhaps form the second tier of Indian English writing, but whose zest and talent for venturing into areas and choosing topics that are not on the usual 'beat' is second to none. In this volume, the nonfiction section is especially appealing, as Indian English authors tackle this particular genre (with its current market cachet, of course, not hurting at all!) and explore an Indian space, reality, and culture that seem unbounded and infinitely complex. The collection is made up of a total of 12 nonfiction pieces, 11 short stories, and to my surprise, nine poems by 3 poets - surprise since the first volume had not contained any, and not having had the opportunity to go through the next two volumes in 2006 and 2007, I was unaware when the publishers had decided to include poetry by 'emerging talents.' That this series has been conceived and shaped differently from the usual run, however, was apparent when the first volume included a selection from Sarnath Banerjee's graphic novel. In volume 4, too, one nonfiction work, 'Tsampa on My Shoulder' by Vidura Jang Bahadur, an account of a trek in Tibet, is accompanied by some starkly beautiful, black-and-white photos. Among the short stories, 'The Train' (Sunanda Krishnamurty), 'Nina Awaits Mrs Kamath's Decision' (Salil Chaturvedi), 'The Room with the Lamps' (Prem Nath) and 'Thubten Returns' stand out. The poems contain translation of Viky Arya's Hindi work, and English ones by names I have yet to come across in other contexts: Avik Chanda and Yumlam Tana, the latter a member of the Nyishi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh, who writes in English. The nonfiction contingent is a strong one, and aside from Jaya Jaitly's piece reprinted above (whose cadences catch the wet, distracted passage of a privileged Kerala childhood), 'A Day in the Life of a Delhiwalla' (Mayank Austen Soofi), 'Back to Where I Never Belonged' (Kishalay Battacharjee), 'How I Accidentally Wrote an Indian Cult Novel in Swedish' (Zac O'Yeah), 'Journey to Dindigul' (A. Revathi), and the un-intentionally hilarious 'Body-building in Kabul' (Sandeep Kumar) give ample notice where perhaps the next generation of Indian English authorial talent is going to focus on. While the rest of the South Asian pack pantlingly lag far, far behind, stuck with misfiring national education programs, and archaic debates about English versus the mother tongue.
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