Piyush Jha spoke to Karan Bhardwaj about lack of good crime stories in India
Writing crime fiction may have always been a big phenomenon in the West but this genre could never catch the fancy of Indian writers. The most we have done is the frivolous attempt to combine romance and crime together, naturally failing to impress the hardcore readers of this genre. Author Piyush Jha, who has recently launched Compass Box Killer (Rupa Publications), says that there is hardly any serious crime writing happening in the country. “I don’t feel any competition. Even those who have written so far are not dedicated crime-fiction writers. like Ravi Subramanian or Vikram Chandra, they haven’t written serious crime stories. Subramanian’s work is a bank-related act while Chandra’s was a huge piece. India has always lacked good, compelling crime stories. In films, there is a great confusion. We don’t make crime-based films. Romance is quite dominating and it dictates the passage of crime,” he said.
Jha’s Compass Box Killer is a logical progression of his last novel Mumbaistan, a compilation of three crime-thriller novellas based in Mumbai. “It takes forward the story of Inspector Virkar, a protagonist of one of the stories. The plot is based on series of murders,” he informed.
Jha, also a filmmaker, says his writing is different from his peers. He doesn’t believe in adding “atmosphere” to the story. “A lot of writers add many passages only describing the scene. Readers tend to oversee them. So I skip such things. Even critics have said that I write in a manner where you find the thrill in between the lines. There has to be logical progression of exciting events,” he said.
The author-filmmaker says his favourite pastime is to write stories. He has a number of them to share. “I don’t even keep a count. Recently I finished a story which I was writing for three days. I don’t know how and when it will come out but it’s quite interesting. It’s about a man-made disaster,” said the writer, whose favourite novel includes The Day of the Jackal by Friedrick Forsyth. “I have grown up reading such stories. I used to read The Famous Five, The Secrets Heaven, The Three Investigators and The Hardy Boys. It’s the thrill of the crime, solving the crime. I would try to figure the killer. I like books which are page-turners,” he said.
Jha had earlier announced to translate Mumbaistan on celluloid. “I am talking to a few production houses. Now I am planning to launch it as a larger franchise with games, t-shirts etc,” he said.