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A novel idea
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Penguin India has just come up with a set of quick-reads
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One of the quick reads
Train journeys and novels have a long-standing camaraderie. And we all, at some point of time, have gladly chipped in to keep this association sailing. Boarding a train to get to one's workplace is no more the distinctiveness of a Mumbaikar or a Kolkattan alone. Vaishali Mathur, senior commissioning editor of the ever expanding publishing house, throws light on the ‘whys' and the ‘hows' behind the introduction of the concept to the city's commuters. “We have been studying the market and felt that there was a gap as far as literature for the people on the move with busy lifestyles and shortage of time, was concerned. These are people who like to read but don't have the patience to carry around heavy tomes.”
And so Metro Reads come to life. Penguin has introduced the series with a trio — Love Over Coffee by Delhiite Amrit N. Shetty, Where Girls Dare by Roorkee-resident Bhavna Chauhan, and Dreams in Prussian Blue by Pune-based Paritosh Uttam. Sticking to the concept of racy quickies, none of the novels spans beyond 250 pages, and the stories are severely metro-ish. Amrit's protagonist Anup, a happy-go-lucky city slicker, with a pack of friends to help him out of sticky situations, finds himself a misfit in an IT company.
Then there are Bhavna's fun-loving women cadets at the Officers' Training Academy at Chennai. They fight, they bicker, they cry and raise hell. But the journey to become officers in the army, they realise eventually, is also a learning experience. In Dreams in Prussian Blue, Paritosh features young Naina utterly smitten by Michael, her senior at Fine Arts College, Mumbai. They decide to live in, but life soon turns into a rollercoaster.
SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTHY
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