Advertisment

Adman turns author: Draftfcb Ulka's Anees Salim makes fiction debut

His first 'The Vicks Mango Tree' has just been released. He has lined up three more titles in quick succession

author-image
BestMediaInfo Bureau
New Update
Adman turns author: Draftfcb Ulka's Anees Salim makes fiction debut

Adman turns author: Draftfcb Ulka's Anees Salim makes fiction debut

His first 'The Vicks Mango Tree' has just been released. He has lined up three more titles in quick succession

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Delhi | November 6, 2012

publive-imageAnees Salim, Creative Head, Draftfcb Ulka, Kochi, made his literary debut last month with 'The Vicks Mango Tree' (HarperCollins), a book that tells the story of India under the Emergency as she limps through 21 months of suspended civil liberties, half-hearted revolts and stern censorships. This Kochi adman will have not just one but four of his books brought out by major publishers.

A school dropout, Salim has spent more time in the company of books and in trains than with friends, his meanderings providing material for his novels. Having spent most of his growing up years in a home library, Salim calls himself an autodidact. He spent his adolescent days travelling across India, seeing places and meeting people. In 1995, he joined Ulka as a trainee copywriter.

“The Vicks Mango Tree is essentially about the Emergency, a period millions of Indians consider as the darkest chapter of India's history. I was too young to understand its meaning and implications when it happened. But I remember listening to people, mostly women, who supported it because they had blind faith in Indira Gandhi. And, of course, there were people who were totally upset about the Emergency, but they were as quiet about it as the censored newspapers. The Emergency was one thing I had always wanted to write a book about, even as a schoolboy,” commented Salim.

Salim has three more books coming out in the next two years. 'Vanity Bagh' (Picador) sketches the picture of a tiny Pakistan inside a big Indian city. 'The Blind Lady's Descendants' (Amaryllis) is written as a suicide note of a young Muslim from a little known Indian town. 'Tales From a Vending Machine' (HarperCollins) is the hilarious story of a young girl employed at an airport coffee shop. While his debut novel, 'The Vicks MangoTree', would hit bookstores across the country this month, the others will follow in quick succession.

The storyline of the book: A few months after Emergency is clamped in India, Raj Iyer, a fledgling journalist living in the alley of the Vicks mango tree, goes underground. And shortly after the Emergency is lifted, he resurfaces in a corner of the Municipal Park as a bronze statue. Though nobody knows the exact reason for his meteoric rise to fame, a book is being written on him, hailing him as the modern hero of Mangobaag.

Though confined to the tiny kingdom of Mangobaag, The Vicks Mango Tree is the story of India as she limps through 21 months of suspended civil liberties, half-hearted revolts and stern censorships. It is also the tale of common people like Teacher Bhatt, Rabia Sheik and Raj Iyer who pursue their middle class Indian dreams, and of local legends like Maharaja Muneer Shah, Miss Myna and Dr Abid Ali who live and die in the dying light of a glorious past.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com

Info@BestMediaInfo.com

Advertisment