What Indians can’t write–and why

There are three kinds of fiction that Indian writers can’t write: good crime thrillers, good romance (adult kind, in which sex is not “lofty breasts” and “stars in the sky”) and fiction for young adults. So that leaves us readers with literary fiction, pulp fiction and of course, the ubiquitous campus novel. By the way, a really cool crime title which Hachette India is publishing is by Lounge columnist, the more Bangalorean-and-less-Swedish writer Zac O’Yeah. His book ‘Scandanavistan’ is a spy thriller set in a futuristic Europe colonized by India!
When  I last visited my favourite bookstore Landmark (finally, Landmark opens this side of town, in Lower Parel), Martin Amis, Susan Sontag and Vikram Seth sat alongside each other in the literary fiction shelves. The new releases section had a dizzying variety of books. There was no separate section for cime, but in popular fiction, there was Swedish fiction, Raymond Chandler and John Le Carre. The only Indian authors here was Kalpish Ratna—they never got to me although their crime stories are soaked in very local Bombay flavours.
There was no category for young adults. In the children’s books section, there was the phenomenally successful ‘Twilight’ series and the usual sci-fi and fantasy titles. What do teenagers and young adults who don’t like sci-fi or fantasy or love stories revolving handsome vampires, read?
Indian writers are good at assiduously recreating sights, sounds and smells of the places they grew up in—some in beautiful, engaging prose—-appealing only to a particular kind of reader. And at making instant gratification metro fiction about college, partying, dating, sex and marriage, there is no fiction from Indian that can really create new tastes.
Crime fiction has got to be one of the toughest genres to master. It requires a rationalist’s mind and adventurer’s heart to write and appreciate good crime fiction. Original fiction that will appeal to the young adult set, already exposed to the best in the world through the Internet and TV requires being able to empathize with fragile and volatile minds and write smartly enough to get their attention. 
Most of our writing is inward-looking, indulgent and soaked in the romantic idea of writing well in English—which is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as new genres and new tastes are born.