Pratilipi: What lead you to publishing books in Hindi? What broadly is the Harper Collins hypothesis about the ‘Hindi Sanskriti’? What were your observations about the Hindi market?

Minakshi Thakur: HarperCollins Publishers is one of the three leading English language publishers in the world. It set up operations in India in 1995 and had till 2008 been publishing the UK backlist and local Indian English writing. But in a country where the primary language, the first language of parlance is not English, it felt, seemed a bit  lopsided rather incomplete not to publish in languages that are actually Indian, those that originated in India and are spoken by most people. There are more people talking and thinking and going about their lives and livelihood in the Bhashas than in English. And Hindi is definitely the first one which comes to our mind then.

Also language writing in any country or region is much more honest, dynamic, socio-politically and emotionally nuanced, topical and brave. There is a huge market waiting to be taken over. There are huge gaps in the Hindi market waiting to be identified. We knew the basic challenge was to understand how different the Hindi market or audience was from the English. We had to enter this terrain on the market’s terms, not ours.

The one big gap we identified was that most books in traditional Hindi publishing is not produced keeping the reader in mind. Also there is hardly any culture of editing there. The books are poorly produced. They look uninspiring. The big challenge for us was to unlearn certain things we swear by in English publishing and learn things about the Hindi reader afresh.

We had to understand things like -given a choice your reader would borrow books and read than buy them. The buying capacity needed to be understood. Competing with the Hindi market price points would pose a huge problem as we were aiming at the same quality as Harper’s English titles. New writing, experimental writing and regional writing was to be given a chance and taken from one language to another gradually. So we started with Hindi. We shall graduate to Bangla as well in a year’s time.

We began with the Hindi translations of the Chronicles of Narnia – seven volumes of the bestselling children’s fantasy seven-book series in Hindi. They were published as Narniya Ki Kahaniyan.  In original writing we did Geetanjali’s collection of short stories March Ma Aur Sakura followed by Jyotsna Milan’s novel A Astu Ka recently.

Pratilipi: What made you go for a reproduction of this wonderful but kind of ‘forgotten’ novel?

Minakshi Thakur: We decided to republish this second novel by Milan because I see it as an extremely sensitive and great piece of existential writing which held true yesterday and will hold true today and tomorrow for every woman. It’s a very very brave novel and needs to be publicized and translated into different languages so it gets what it really deserves.

Back to what’s more in store, we are closing the year 2008-09 with the translation one of Paulo Coelho’s novel. It’s titled Portobello Ki Jadugarni and Mukul Deva’s mass market thriller Lashkar based on the Sarojini Nagar series blasts.

In the year 2009-10 we grow from 11 books to 42. Sara Rai’s novel Smritiyon Ka Desh,  Late Rajkamal Chaudhary’s novel Khargosh Ka Bachcha, Teji Grover’s poetry, short stories by Gyan Prakash Vivek, Mithal Mausi Ka Parivar Puran, a nonfiction on women in Indian power politics by Neelam Gupta of Jansatta, a 16 book series of short detective fiction and a 10 book series of best short stories since emergency. We will build up a strong pulp/ popular fiction list. We are soon planning to resurrect a very well known thriller writer of the subcontinent.  There has to be a right mix of literary and mass market writing for a publishing list to stand on its own.

We are looking at publishing three first time writers every year.

Pratilipi: Translation industry in Hindi is still in a very primitive state. What kind of translations you are aiming at?

Minakshi Thakur: Among translations we start in May with the Hindi version of the Booker winner Arvind Adiga’s The White Tiger. Darlingji – Nargis Aur Sunil Dutt Ki Anoothi Prem Kahani comes this June. From world literature we translate two more of Paulo Coelho’s, Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing translated by Prof. Anamika, Hanif Kureishi’s Intimacy,  Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas translated by Neelabh Ashk, Naipaul’s Booker winning title In a Free State by Jan 2010. Also on the list is urbane fiction, the bestselling chick-lit Almost Single by Advaita Kala in a very peppy translation.

Pratilipi: What is your estimation of the established competitors like Rajkamal, Vani and Gyanpeeth? Unfortunately there is a strong ‘library culture’ in Hindi book selling, how do you plan to encounter that?

Minakshi Thakur: About the big Hindi publishers like Rajkamal, Vani and Gyanpeeth I would say there is a lot to learn from them and much more not to borrow or learn from them. On the one hand we should be thankful that whatever we have read so far in Hindi – all the great authors and their lovely books-  is because they have been there. On the other what we cannot tow their line on is state govt. subsidies and library orders. We cannot go that way or do books solely for that. We will produce books for the discerning audience; we shall produce books to create an interface between the writer and his/her readers. Again it is going to be very difficult and daunting and a slow process. We cannot claim that Harper Hindi will become huge or pose a threat to any of the big old Hindi concerns in two years’ time. It won’t. Also we don’t have the time to play rivals. There are better things one can invest their time in.  The attitude has to be right and a lot of experiment in the market would be required to find a breakthrough. The Hindi market needs a definite facelift. We must break away in certain ways and give the reader something in a way that hasn’t been tried before and most importantly at the price they can afford.