Authors Electric

In our modern western world A uthors and Publishers  rarely meet, let alone become good friends.  Growing up in India, I had heard the stories of the Bengali Renaissance being ushered in by a small group of writers and publishers who were also friends, including giants like Ram Mohan Roy, Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar and Michael Madhusudan Dutt who mentored new voices as well as wrote powerfully. As an underduate student of English Literature, I read of the Hogarth Press run by the Woolfs, which gave a voice to the Bloomsbury group. Unfortunately my very first experience of publishing was anything but congenial and friendly.  I had gone to meet the publisher of Penguin, India, then headed by a man who had turned Penguin’s fortunes around in Asia and was considered no less than a God. It was made clear to me that it was my great fortune that he was meeting me at all, and after he rejected the book proposal I had come with but signed me on to edit an anthology of So...