Digital Era Spelling Doom For Hindi Pulp-Fiction
NEW DELHI: Rajan Iqbal, a bookseller at the New Delhi Railway Station, vividly remembers "those days" when Hindi pulp fiction books were his stall's bestsellers. Today, he struggles to sell even a single copy in a day and blames the internet for "killing the reading habit and diminishing the business of pocket books".
"It was not even five years back when I used to have customers who bought over 50 books at one go. There was a lady from America who used to come to my stall and buy as many as 75 books in a single purchase," Iqbal told us, while pointing at the stack of unsold pulp fiction books lined up on his stall.
"But today, these books hardly have any buyers; and the only reason I think is the coming of the internet, new age smart phones and the laptop," he ruefully added.
Back in the 1980s, the popularity of the genre was at its peak, with authors like Surendra Mohan Pathak, Ved Prakash Sharma, Anil Mohan and Gulshan Nanda being widely read. With the new means of entertainment entering the market, the genre gradually lost its sheen.
"There are no longer any potential writers or new readers because people are now more interested in television and using their mobile phones or the internet," writer Pathak, who has nearly 300 novels to his credit, told us on phone.
"This has diminished the business of pocket books. Now there are just a handful of publishers in Delhi and Meerut, compared to 50-60 in the early 80s," the 75-year-old author, known for his "Sunil Series" and "Vimal Series", added.
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