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Photo: K.V.Srinivasan

Interesting initiative Release of Tamil fiction by Blaft

The result? Blaft, a new publication house that aims to introduce a wider range of English fiction, graphic novels and so on, to the reading public than is currently available.

“I got interested in Tamil pulp fiction novels after moving to Chennai in 1998,” says Rakesh Kumar Khanna, a mathematician from U.C. Berkeley and IIT Madras.

“But I found that none of these books were being translated, and I really wanted to read them!”

So, he began a personal project to translate the treasure trove of pulp literature in Tamil. That morphed into Blaft when his wife Rashmi Ruth Devadasan and their friend Kaveri Lalchand came on board.

“Pulp from America gets shipped around the world, and Mills & Boon is pulp that our aunts and moms grew up on, but how many people have read Ramanichandran?” asks Rashmi, who worked as Gautham Menon’s associate director for several years.

Ramanichandran, for those not in the know, is the queen of romance in Tamil fiction circles with 125 novels to her credit, and the 126th on the way. She is one of the 10 authors whose work was included in ‘The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction’, which is one of three books recently launched by the new publication house at the Park.

But Blaft isn’t only about pulp fiction. The other two books released include a quirky collection of black and white drawings by Natesh called, ‘When This Key Sketch Gets Real Tongue is Fork Hen is Cock When This Key Sketch Gets Real My Baby Eagle’s Dream Comes True’ (yes, that’s really the title) and ‘Zero Degree’ by Charu Nivedita, a transgressive novel that isn’t what you’d think of as typical Indian English fiction at all. (‘Zero Degree’ and the anthology have both been painstakingly translated by Pritam Charavarthy.)

“We’re hoping to ferret out writers tucked away in the city, people who’re afraid to approach large, multinational publication houses,” says Rashmi.

“And we’d really like to bring out graphic novels, so anyone doing them in Chennai, get in touch with us!”

But, again, Blaft isn’t just about Chennai. “We’re focusing on South Asia — Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc. — to start with, and then who knows?” says Kaveri, a garment exporter and theatre personality, with a smile.

“Wouldn’t you want to know what a bus conductor in Indonesia reads, or what experimental poetry from Bali is like?” says Rashmi. “What are local people reading apart from the ones that typically get ‘picked up’?”

The three 30-somethings do admit that this is all a bit of a gamble. And the gamble doesn’t stop there — they’re planning to branch into music and even open their own film company soon.

“The purple alien is invading!” laughs Rakesh.

Wait, what purple alien? The one on their logo, of course, the one called Blaft.

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