Hindi pulp fiction can be best described as unputdownable nerve-wracking murder mysteries which served as leisurely reads at extremely pocket-friendly prices. The books range from anything between 30 to 150.

"The reason they became so popular is because they are printed on recycled paper, and hence reasonably priced," Pulkit Jain, managing director, Dheeraj Pocket Books, told us on phone from Meerut.

However, even its cost could not save the genre's diminishing popularity. This, reiterates Jain, was due to the increased use of modern technology which has led to a steep fall in the reading habit, also reflected by the genre's sale figures.

Agreed Manoj Kumar, another bookseller at the Railway Station, who said that against the 20 books he used to sell daily nearly five years back, today he is hardly able to sell two.

"I agree that that I struggle to sell these books now, but you will always find them in stock here. The only difference is that now I get only 40 copies as opposed to the 100 I used to buy earlier," the 29-year-old Kumar told us.

The decline in readership also cost the publishers, who despite trying "hard" to regain the genre's lost popularity by improving the paper quality, cover designs and printing quality, "failed" in doing so.

"We tried every trick in the book to rekindle the romance with the genre, but the attempt was unsuccessful. You cannot do much when you do not have a dedicated readership. So, we are now trying to branch out to other general books to sustain our publication," Jain said, adding that earlier they used to print such books in lakhs which has now reduced to some thousands.

Writers too introduced recent incidents of robbery or murder into their plots to cater to the contemporary readers. But that too could not help regain the genre's once-enjoyed readership.

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