It doesn't get more India 2.0 than it does with Kartik Iyengar, he is unorthodox and spells his name without an ‘H', he does a complicated job in a software company and he is not happy with the mediocre. The man can talk his way into a restaurant that is shut and even get you service, a couple of drinks and a bite to eat in the bargain.
Call it pushy or what you will, the author of “Horn Ok Please: HOPping To Conclusions” is a force that proves techies have a sense of humour. There is no middle ground in the way you feel about him – you either love him or hate him, but with his book in your face and the Facebook phenomenon that he has become you cannot ignore him.
“I just need to sell 15,000 copies and then I can take on ‘Chetan Bharat', I'm just being open and frank but his humour sucks,” he says, taking the necessary precaution to avoid any legal trouble he could most likely get into. “The book is about urban India and all those things we have been taught not to do,” he says with a glint in his eye which being an urban Indian I understood without further explanation.
Kartik's book is about nothing. An arbitrary rambling of his travel-bug bitten heart, with support and input from his Hoppers, as his fans on Facebook and everywhere else are fondly called. “I am heavily addicted to the social media, and it is only because of the leverage that these outlets and my fans on these portals have given me that I had sold 10,000 copies even before the book was out.”
It was the Hoppers who helped him price the book, figure out the content and even helped him write his last chapter which has quotes from fans across the world. One could choose to read the book from front to back or in reverse and still be assured it wouldn't make any sense. “This is the world's greatest loo book, or ‘blook', it was keeping this in mind that the cover has a roll of toilet paper on it.” The cover also shows his noisy jeep, his gadgets and his lucky number 69.
With a straight face Kartik explains: “My lucky number 69 speaks of the perfect balance between work and life,” and he quickly adds “Among other things.”
Kartik has a one-point agenda with his book, to make people smile, and his book guarantees it in all varieties, starting from the silent kind to the chuckling, guffawing and rip-roaring laughter kind.
“If I was a nobody before the book, after this book I am the biggest nobody. I introduce myself as a moron and have put my moronic thoughts in this book where thinking is prohibited. Thinking constipates the mind so I say dream, and Freud was a fool,” he says one after the other letting his staccato thoughts come out on the record.
Is he worried about the critics? “Who are they going to criticise, me or 100,000 people out there? Go ahead make my day,” he grins.
Kartik's book opens with a foreword by the Dalai Lama, a note by the sage telling the world why the book should be a success. The book is also driven by charity starting from the publishing which has happened at an orphanage to the 50 percent of the profits which he has pledged to the two charities' he is a part of. In “Horn Ok Please” Kartik chronicles his travels along with his merry men across the country all the way to Ladakh.
It was during this trip that he met the Dalai Lama and he even sponsored two girl children from the Tibetan Children's Village.
“Imagine being an orphan with no motherland and that's why I chose Tibet. My cause has always been women and children, and cancer, and that's how I got associated with Mahesh Memorial Home in Chennai, where they help people live through cancer and beyond it.”
Kartik's background as a techie who deals with cloud computing, social media and every other geeky thing in the world contributed to the book.
His next book has been titled “Horn Ok Please: The Scrotum Scrolls” and Scrotum tentatively stands for Society Of Compulsive Roadhogs Out To Underline Total Moronisms. Kartik signs out to go write his blook, smack!
