MxMIndia

Tag: Roli Books

  • A new book profiles 9 business leaders including Shobhana Bhartia and Ekta Kapoor. Exclusive extracts + interview with author Alam Srinivas

    Of the Paper Tigress & Soap Queen

     

    By Alam Srinivas

     

    From Shobhana Bhartia: Paper Tigress

    “What did she learn at the Post? One of the most important learnings was that the look and feel of a newspaper matters a lot. These issues were almost irrelevant in India during the 1980s.

     

    ‘In those days, newspaper was a messy affair, and the black ink used to come off from the newsprint; one would have black hands by the time one had finished reading the paper. There were many manual interventions. Like the fact that column galleys had to be physically pasted before being printed. Sometimes, the galleys would be crooked, but no one would bother; the common reaction was “aaj thoda teda ho gaya and it would okay the next day”.’

     

    More than a woman…
     

    Any attempt to dig into the professional and the more challenging personal lives of celebrities takes quite some doing. And if the subject happens to be a woman – and an influential one at that – the task becomes that much more daunting.

     

    With Women of Vision, author Alam Srinivas, who is a freelance journalist with over 25 years of experience, has managed to get up close and personal with nine of the most influential women business leaders, who have laid bare their personal and professional lives like never before. As Mr Srinivas says, “I was pretty surprised that each of the women leaders whom I met was so candid and transparent about any or every aspect of their lives.”

     

    In conversation with Johnson Napier of MxMIndia, Alam Srinivas tells of how in a face-to-face interview, each icon shares her journey of how she battled male-dominated hierarchies to shatter the glass ceiling and set up successful business empires through grit, determination, hard work and merit.

     

    How did the thought of profiling women business achievers come about?

    There were a few things that went into the whole process of putting together this book. Although there have been books on successful women in India they have been more inclined towards celebrities or people from art & culture, and have included some women from the business arena. But I cannot think of any book that has only focused on women business leaders. So that was one gap that we identified and which we thought ought to be fulfilled. Also if you observe the last twenty years, post-economic reforms a lot of women have done very well not just as entrepreneurs or business women but as business leaders, managers, CEOs…In fact there are enough Indian women leaders who’ve made a mark around the world as well. So there was a need to do such kind of a book and also the time was appropriate to do such a venture because there were enough people to talk to and also enough people who were aspiring to become managers, leaders, CEOs etc.

     

    Women, especially from the business sphere, have been a source of inspiration for authors to often chronicle and talk about. Right?

    When you talk about successful business women they are not just women who have inherited their family’s wealth or business, there were also women who were first generation entrepreneurs, there were women who have successfully become managers, CEOs, etc. So there was this whole spectrum of women who were doing well and in different ways. Even when you look at their SEC profiles they come from different backgrounds. There are some who hail from middle class families, there are some who come from well-to-do but not rich families, there were people who come from business families…yet again there was this whole spectrum of women who were doing well so I thought one needs to capture all this in a book format. Also the publishers had this idea of doing a book around business women and that’s how it all started.

     

    Was it a conscious decision to profile just nine women from across diverse fields? There have been quite a few influential names that have been missed out…

    I had made a list of about 40 women from across different age groups and sectors. But as I started going through the research work I realised that a book on 40 people would become very unwieldy, and also a lot of stories and issues were similar so that kind of made it seem repetitive. It’s then that I decided to narrow down to just ten women who encompassed every shade and contour that I need to put on paper. If you look at the current list, there are women from North, South, East and West. Also, in terms of age range, there is a person who is 30 years old and there is someone who is a grandmother. As I said, in terms of SEC there are people who are managers, first generation entrepreneurs, etc. So we had to capture all kinds of nuances and also not become too repetitive. If you read the articles in this book, they are not biographical in nature but rather consist of sketches of these people. So it was not the numbers game but trying to capture the whole idea.

     

    One is surprised to see the vast access you’ve managed to gain into the lives of each of the subjects. What was it that made them open up and get as candid with you about their personal and professional doings?

    I was pretty surprised that each of the people I met was so candid and transparent and open about any or every aspect of their lives. Like, for example, Ekta Kapoor, who says that there was a phase in her life where she was arrogant but that she is trying to change and be a better person. Similarly with Chanda Kochhar, it was her initiative to take ICICI into Retail Loans which kind of backfired as the global economy went down. So there are multiple such candid moments that have been shared by these women leaders. I am not sure if this has been the case before. Maybe women leaders are more sensitised to their surroundings etc…I was pretty surprised by the response that I got from each of them where they allowed me to get deep into their personal and professional lives.

     

    What has been the initial response that you’ve been receiving for your book?

    It’s too early to talk about the reception that my book has been receiving from all quarters but the initial reactions are that of surprise for the fact that they have allowed access inside their world so intimately and passionately. That’s been the general reaction as of now.
     

    Shobhana was amazed to find out that the Western media had given up manual technology years ago, and had embraced state-of-the-art systems and software.

     

    Another critical lesson was the manner in which a global media organization looked at the readers. It studied and figured who its readers were and targeted them. There was a synergy between the readers, the product and the platform that a newspaper provided for its customers.

     

    ‘This was something we would not think of in the 1980s. None of these insights went into our decision-making process. In addition, most of the Indian newspapers had little competition and were on their own trajectory. Even the Indian consumer never thought of the newspaper as a product. For her, it was more of a habit; she would wake up in the morning and carry the paper as a companion.’

     

    But, over the next decade or so, the Indian media changed. Along with technology and the rise of the middle class came the concepts of consumer satisfaction and choice. The consumer demanded certain things from her paper, which had to change.”

     

    From Ekta Kapoor: Queen of Soaps

    “Ekta was 20, and she was willing to slug it out. It took almost 5-6 years for her, and Balaji Telefilms, to break the TV barrier. Hum Paanch ran for five years on Zee; subsequent serials like Itihaas on DD and Kudumbum (Tamil) on Sun TV became huge hits.

     

    Part luck and part vision helped Ekta achieve initial success. Her entry into Hindi and regional serials coincided with the ongoing boom in cable television and private broadcasting. As the stranglehold of DD waned, a huge viewership was awaiting the launch of new serials, and Ekta was there at the right time to whet their appetite.

     

    Throughout the second half of the 1990s, while other production houses and broadcasters focused on Western-style soaps, mostly as copies (as even Ekta did with Hum Paanch), Balaji went a step further. Its research showed that the viewership of Hindi fiction-based soaps was 60 per cent, which appealed to a large number of women across regions and languages.

     

    ‘We were stable only by 2000,’ Ekta said. Her mother added that they continued to keep a strict control on expenditure, and worked out of a basement since the channel’s budgets for shows were low and the margins for the production houses were meagre. ‘We could not afford expensive office space in Mumbai; it was only after our IPO [Initial Public Offering in late 2000] that we moved into this plush office and did well in the TV entertainment business.’

     

    By 2000, Ekta had arrived. Balaji Telefilms launched seven shows in that year. The next year saw another 3-4 serials. All of them were lapped up by the audience.”

     

    *****

     

    “Ekta’s splash in the past two years has been in her achievements in Bollywood. In March 2010 came Love, Sex and Dhoka, followed by Once Upon a Time in Mumbai, and culminated in other hits like Ragini MMS. The final dhamaka came in the form of The Dirty Picture. The string of such films proved that Ekta had acquired a new creative edge, and there was a radical shift in her content strategy. For one, most of these movies were low budget ones. While some had well-known stars like Ajay Devgn and Vidya Balan, who won her first National Award for The Dirty Picture, the production and editing expenses were kept low. Many films had lesser-known actors.

     

    Two, they were made with a specific audience in mind. Ekta had long realized, in 2008, that the viewers had changed and were fragmented. In urban towns they were younger, urban, mostly liberal, ambitious, aggressive and confident about finding their feet in this dog-eat-dog world. Among them, the more affluent ones went to malls and PVRs to watch movies. Almost all the movies she produced in the 2010-12 period fell under the genre of the so-called PVR movies.

     

    More importantly, Ekta’s characters changed dramatically. While the K-serials portrayed women as conservative and traditional, those in LSD and The Dirty Picture were in-your-face individuals, who were willing to experiment with life and shed their conservatism. They were women of the 21st century, who rubbed shoulders with men and many times stood above them. They knew their minds and bodies, and they knew what they had to do and why.

     

    Women of Vision: Nine Business Leaders in Conversation with Alam Srinivas

    Excerpted with permission of the publisher, Roli Books

    Price Rs 140, 128 pages

     

     

  • Writing a book while dealing with the day job of being a journalist isn't an easy task, but those who persevere are reaping the fruit of their labour.

    Journo-authors: Telling a story, both ways

     

     

    By Archita Wagle

     

    “Modern journalism, which is about 100 years old, has a tradition of journalists going on to write books,” feels Naresh Fernandes, Editor, Time Out and author of Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay’s Jazz Age, which was launched recently at the Goa Literary Festival.

     

    And probably that is the reason that so many take the plunge from writing a story to writing a book. So then in spite of having a day job, why does a journalist, whether a reporter or one of the editing team, take the time and trouble to write a book.

     

    Sometimes it is just the desire to share the experiences that the person has gone through like Rashmi Kumar, Features Editor, Deccan Herald, whose first book, Stilettos in the Newsroom is an effort to chronicle her experiences in the newsroom. “I felt that I was a misfit in the newsroom, I was not well-connected or aggressive or as street smart as others. I still am not. But I was always sure that I wanted to write,” she said.

     

    Sometimes it is a personal passion that translates into a book, as with Arunava Sinha, Head, ibnlive.com and cricketnext.com, who translates Bengali classics and contemporary literature. Mr Sinha said that he has been translating for a long time but he started publishing only five years ago.

     

    There is a story waiting to be told in every subject, so how does a journalist decide on the topic to base his/her book on? Is it something that they are passionate about, or something that they want to explore in depth? Mr Fernandes’ Taj Mahal Foxtrot was an idea that took root when he was doing an article on jazz for Man’s World. “While doing the article I realized that there was a story in there aboutBombay’s cosmopolitanism. I decided to explore the idea in-depth in a book.”

     

    For Siddharth Bhatia, author of The Navketan Story Cinema Modern and consulting editor, Asian Age, the book was something he had toyed with for years. “I was fascinated by films made in the 50s and 60s, especially those made by Navketan. I would have written this book much earlier but it was only recently that Devsaab agreed to give time for the book.”

     

    Writing a book while continuing with the day job of being a journalist isn’t an easy task. Sitting up late at night, working on weekends, fitting time around a busy schedule become a part of a journalist-author’s life. There are times when they suffer from the classic writers’ block. They go away, keep the book aside, take sojourns, or sometimes just keep hacking away. But they don’t give up. And if they do, the publishers are always there to remind them. “I pitched the idea to the publishing house and they accepted. After that I just kept it aside, it was they who reminded me that I had a book to write,” said Ms Kumar.

     

    If one were to look at the books that have been written by journalists over the years, one notices that there is a mix of fiction and non-fiction. Though almost all journalists agree that non-fiction is easier to write as it deals in facts, something that is a “natural progression from being a journalist” as Mr Fernandes says, but he is also quick to point out that writing non-fiction is tougher than fiction as “we have to construct the narrative out of facts, we can’t let our imagination take over when we hit a blank spot”.

     

    Writing is a book is never easy but what after the book is written or even halfway complete, how easy or difficult it is to get it published. Do the journalists pitch their proposals to the publishing houses or vice versa?

     

    Priya Kapoor, director, Roli Books explained the process of publishing a non-fiction book. The publishers have a commissioning program. Sometimes there might be an event of interest like the IPL controversy. They then research on what has been written about the topic, who has been covering it, how has the person covered the topic and then approach the person they feel is best suited for writing the book.

     

    “When we commission non-fiction books, 70 percent of the time, we approach them. Sometimes it is because the person has been covering the subject for a long time or because they have access and contact required to do the book or if writing about the topic excites them,” she added.

     

    She illustrated her point by citing an example: After 26/11, Roli decided to come out with a compilation of articles and perspectives on the terror attack in a book. Everyone was working around the clock. It was here that the journalistic discipline of sticking to deadlines came useful. The book was on the stands in January the following year.

     

    That makes it sound as if it is easy for the journalists to get their books published. But that is not the case all the time. “It is not very easy for journalists either to pitch for getting a book published. We might get an extra point for our ability to adhere to deadlines, but that is all that we get as an advantage,” feels Mr Bhatia. He is the first one to point out that he isn’t an authority on films, but when he approached the publisher, Harper Collins, something did click and the rest has been published as Cinema Modern, a look at Navketan, cinema in the 50s and 60s and India’s history along the way.

     

    But not all journalists stick to writing non-fiction. Some like Sidin Vadukut, Sonia Faleiro and Rashmi Kumar also venture into fiction. “I would not say it is all fiction. My book is part fiction and part autobiography. I have left it to the reader to figure out which is fact and what is fiction,” explained Ms Kumar, whose book Stilettos tracks the journey of Radhika Kanetkar’s slow raise in the world of newspaper and finally her wedding.

     

    Some even venture into other territories like translating. Arunava Sinha has already translated works like My Kind of Girl by Buddhadeva Bose, considered to be one of Bengal’s foremost writers of the 20th century, Harbart by Nabarun Bhattacharya and Three Women by Rabindranath Tagore. Mr Sinha would love to give up his day job but agrees that he doesn’t get paid enough to pursue his passion full time. “It is not a profession, but a passion. Money is not my primary consideration,” he stated.

     

    After the book is complete, it goes to the editor to be edited. How easy is it for a journalist to give up something that s/he has toiled for to another person who will very critically edit it? Most reporters say that they are used to the fact that their ‘copies’ would be ruthlessly edited. As Mr Bhatia very succinctly puts it, “The book editors have a particular way of editing. They look at continuity, the flow of the book, contradictions in chapters and so on. I was fortunate to work with one of the best editors of Harper Collins. He pointed out several things that I would have never noticed as I was too close to the subject.”

     

    Even Ms Kapoor agrees, “It is not as if journalists interfere more with the editing process than any other writer. But sometimes looking at a particular subject we might give them some leeway, with respect to their sources and contacts.”

     

    But Ms Kumar begs to differ, being from the editing side of the business. “I never had a problem with the way my story was edited. But I also edit copies and that is something that is now internalised. I made sure that the material I submitted was clear and concise,” she said.

     

    Mr Fernandes took nearly eight years to complete his book, working around his job. Bhatia could only focus full time on the book after he quit his job. Mr Sinha makes it a point to sit at night and focus on his translations. Ms Kumar is now ready with her second “tongue-in-cheek” book on a 30-something girl’s matrimonial adventure search. But they are not ready to quit. “After all one day I will retire from my day job, but I can continue to write as long as I want,” says Mr Bhatia. Indeed aptly summed.

     

    Coming attractions

     

    After the release of Mumbai Mirror editor Meenal Baghel’s debut novel Death in Mumbai, which Priya Kapoor, Director, Roli Books describes as a “well written and well researched book which makes the effort to get inside each character, 2012 will see the release of S Husain Zaidi’s book “From Dongri to Dubai” on Mumbai’s underworld and the history of gangsters.

     

    Mr Zaidi, resident editor of Asian Age/ Deccan Chronicle, already has two books on the underworld connection to his credit, Black Friday (which was made into a film) and Mumbai Queens, which chronicles the tales of Mumbai’s female gangsters.

     

    He took four years to complete the book according to Priya Kapoor. If there are no further developments or twists, the book is set to be released in the first quarter of 2012.