Author ki beti author: In their blood or nepotism?

Nayantara Violet Alva revisits one of her mother Anuja Chauhan’s books at home in Santa Cruz. Pic/Anurag Ahire

What do three of this year's new book releases - Liberal Hearts, Missy and Take No. 2020 - have in common? They all dwell on questions of privilege and struggle in some form or the other. And, ironically, they're all written by first-time authors who have very successful writers for parents.

What could these debutant authors, with their impeccable literary pedigree, have to say about struggle, one may ask? In a cut-throat industry where lakhs of aspiring writers will never see their names in print, this trio's famous last names made waves in publishing circles with the mere announcement of their debut. It stands to reason that now that their books are out, peers and readers alike will seek to judge, "is it talent or nepotism"?

Anuja Chauhan

We ask Mumbai-born Raghav Rao, whose novel Missy released a mere month ago, if he has heard chatter about his "privilege" as the son of Jaitirth "Jerry" Rao, businessman and author of The Indian Conservative and other non-fiction works. "Sure, I've experienced some of that and it's normal, isn't it?" says the 33-year-old, "I don't even think they are wholly wrong. I'm a massive beneficiary of my parents' success. I've dramatised this same conflict [the privileged versus the disadvantaged] that we're discussing in Missy itself."

His book tells the tale of a 17-year-old orphan who rejects the two choices placed before her - a lifetime as a servant or a nun - instead fleeing to Chicago where she thrives as a businesswoman. His life's trajectory might not resemble Missy's, but the privilege of birth is something that preoccupies Rao greatly.

Puneet Sikka initially started writing Take No. 2020 as a script with meatier female roles that she could play. Pic/Nishad Alam

"Perhaps because I've always been self-conscious that, compared to so many, I've had so many advantages, I've also been attuned to the stories of people who've come through immense challenges," says Rao, adding, "On the one hand, we can agree that using privilege to further widen asymmetries is wrong. But also, to spurn all privilege and advantage is senseless… there are no easy answers or binaries. As a culture, it's important to have conversations about nepotism and privilege. That's my intention with Missy. Readers can judge."

In the case of Nayantara Violet Alva, daughter of well-known fiction writer Anuja Chauhan (Those Pricey Thakur Girls, The Zoya Factor) and television producer Niret Alva, her debut novel Liberal Hearts is set in a liberal arts college not unlike the one she studied at. "I majored in political science at Ashoka University [in Sonipat, Haryana] and thought it would be a very interesting place to set a fictional story. You have a liberal elite hub in the middle of rural Haryana. The second you step out of that bubble, you're suddenly in a very different world and there's a cultural clash," says the Santa Cruz resident whose book released last month.
This is the premise of Liberal Hearts, a coming-of-age story and college romance between student Namya, who begins to question her entitlement after she meets Vir just beyond the campus walls, where he sells overpriced booze to spoiled undergraduates to support his family.

Jerry Pinto, Keshava Guha and Raghav Rao

"I had the idea to write this story in 2017," says Alva, who recalls a similar eye-opening experience when she went to teach spoken English to children from the nearby village Asawarpur. "I noticed entirely different social dynamics at play - a lower caste boy was made to sit on the floor and not given a chair; another child was treated awfully by people even as he struggled with his sexual orientation. And none of the girls were showing up to class," adds the 26-year-old.

Does having an author parent give them an edge in the industry? "One hundred per cent, we have a leg up," says Rao, "Firstly, when you see people around you who have had their ideas enter the culture through the printed word, you are more likely to believe that it's possible for you."

"We also have privilege in the lead-up to publication in terms of marketing know-how. I try to leverage my dad's expertise and contacts in trying to get my book out in front of readers. To me, this feels acceptable because we are no longer in the realm of the artistic but the commercial," he adds.

For Alva, just growing up surrounded by books and being raised by two creative people has shaped her as a writer. "When my family goes to the movies, for example, the entire way back home, we dissect the film, down to the character arcs, the climax, the casting, the writing. It's now my instinct to always look for the bones of the story. Also, my mum is a masterful storyteller and reading her books has always inspired me," she says.

But that does not necessarily make authoring books the natural career choice for the next generation. Alva's day job, and first love, is television production. In fact, she started out writing Liberal Hearts as a screenplay but realised later that it worked better as a novel. Rao worked in advertising in New York for five years before he decided to pursue a literary career, juggling his roles as a creative writing instructor, as well as fiction editor at Another Chicago Magazine.

Media professional and actor Puneet Sikka's Take No. 2020 started out as a script for a web series when she was disappointed by how female characters were written in shows she had auditioned for. "I thought, let me write my own roles," says Sikka who eventually turned the episodes into chapters. "It was never like ‘just because my father has written a book, I'm going to write one too'," says the 37-year-old whose father Harinder Singh Sikka is the author of the spy thriller Calling Sehmat, which was later adapted to film (Alia Bhatt-starrer Raazi).

Borrowing from her own experience, her novel tracks four migrant actors from different socioeconomic backgrounds as they struggle to get their big break in Bollywood.

Whether it was writing for a news show and then as an ad copywriter, Sikka took to writing long before her father, who began his career as a Navy man, then moving to the corporate world and, eventually, books. But there are invaluable lessons she picked up from his journey. "My father is very diligent. No matter how talented you are, there is no such thing as overnight success. Ten years after its initial release, Calling Sehmat found success after he re-released it in 2018 with Penguin," she recalls.

"This puts my mind at ease, especially in an age when books don't have a long shelf life. When people in the publishing world hear my book was released in June, they say I am already late for marketing. Spending time and money on a big marketing push from the get go can be overwhelming for a first-time author. But I learnt from observing my father that when you pour creative energy into something, you get to decide how long it stays in people's minds," Sikka adds.

Sometimes, the learning and inspiration flows in the opposite direction. When her father was producing the 2015 film Nanak Shah Fakir, it was her expertise as a media professional that he turned to for guidance. "We are all sponges, absorbing from our environment and thought processes of people we have grown up with. Parents also grow with you. They see what you are doing. That is the dynamic between my father and me," she says.

Are there more tangible advantages, like easier access to agents and publishers, perhaps? Yes, and no.

The biggest advantage for Alva was "getting connected to the top agent in the country [Kanishka Gupta] through a reference".

"My mom has no connections with Penguin, so I thought I would get a fair shot there. There's always that fear, right? Do they want me just because of my mom, or do they have faith in my book? Here, it was invaluable to have Kanishka, whose opinion matters enough to publishers that they'd be willing to even consider your book out of thousands of drafts they get every day," she says.

Nayantara's mother, author Anuja Chauhan says she and her husband never "protected" or "helped" their children, whether it was with homework, admissions or jobs. "Of course we knew the nepo-kid accusation would come up. Nayantara was very clear that she would do her own thing…"

"I got to read a very advanced draft [of her book], and was impressed enough to introduce her - which is something I have done before, for many other aspiring writers - to an excellent agent. That was it, that was my entire bit," adds the Bengaluru resident.

Rao's experience has been different. "It [his literary lineage] had zero bearing on getting an agent. Most ghosted me; that's normal. Some liked the writing but couldn't identify a market for the book. When my agent made an offer of representation, she had no clue who my dad was, nor did she care. Part of why I remained in America after college, part of why I chose this field was to do something on merit," says the Chicago writer, adding, "Similarly, when PRH [Penguin Random House] India acquired my book, the acquiring editor did not know that my dad was an existing Penguin author. I wanted it that way. I didn't want this special moment in my life to be compromised."

Rao contends, "You cannot get a fiction manuscript accepted by an agent through familial connections and, likewise, with acquiring editors. It must be on the strength of the manuscript alone."

Publishers may not pick up manuscripts merely on the basis of who the author is related to, but the connection certainly doesn't hurt, says Keshava Guha, 34, author of the 2019 novel Accidental Magic and son of renowned historian and author Ramachandra Guha.

"Publishers often believe that it is easier to market a book by someone with a well-known last name. More broadly, publishers increasingly look for writers who have a ‘platform' - a social media following, or a reputation from another field. This might work in the short term, but in the long term it is very dangerous because books have to work on their own terms," he says.

Guha, who is also a political journalist like his father, adds: "I would also say that all of this is a subset of a bigger issue, namely that English-language Indian publishing is almost completely dominated by the one per cent - upper-caste, metropolitan, elite. Within that one per cent, some are even more privileged than others."

Unfortunately, this also means that people are likely to give too much weightage to the parent's role in shaping second-generation authors' careers or comparing the two.

Alva is well aware that her book will probably be compared to her mother's prolific work in the coming-of-age genre, but isn't intimidated. "I think it's natural for people to compare me to my mother. A lot of people love her writing, so they'd want to see what I am like. But I'm very secure in the fact that she and I have very different styles. She's brilliant and I'm not even aspiring to be on her level right now," she says.

Guha, whose fictional debut was very different from his father's non-fiction writing, has no concern on that account. Rather, it's the continuing questions about his dad's hand in shaping his fiction career that he'd like to address. "Writing fiction, at least in the way I try to do it, feels much closer to painting, or songwriting or filmmaking than to historical scholarship… I suspect that my mother [graphic designer Sujata Keshavan] is a much bigger influence on my being a novelist than my father - both her career in design and the fact that she is a lifelong lover of fiction. When people ask me how my father shaped my choice of career, I have to remind them that I have two parents, and that they might be focusing on the wrong one," he offers.

Having a famous parent can give debutant authors more exposure and prepare them better, but that too has its limits. "Maybe their parents can tell them what to expect from the industry and share personal experiences and so on," says Chauhan, "And, of course, they can hope that the people who read their parents' books, might give them a try. But after that, they're on their own."

It's a matter of social capital, says award-winning writer Jerry Pinto: "If your father or mother is a writer, they might resolutely refuse to introduce you to an agent or publisher, but it still would be known that you are so-and-so's child. This is unavoidable."

One can't be blamed for the social capital or advantages they have grown up with, he says. And, even in true cases of nepotism, there's a limit to how much it can help.

"It can get difficult to unpick where social capital ends and nepotism begins. Eventually, it does seem as if talent and hard work is what separates the wheat from the chaff," says Pinto, "Having a famous parent might help with the first book, but from there on, it's going to depend on whether you've written a good or bad book."

Prayaag Akbar - son of veteran journalist and prolific author MJ Akbar - not only won multiple awards for his debut novel Leila (2017), but released his second book, Mother India, this July.

Guha, meanwhile, has also found recognition on a global stage, with his second book The Tiger's Share picked up by a British publisher and set for release next year. While his first novel tracks four lonely people looking for community and connection through the Harry Potter fandom, his second is a story of sibling rivalries within two families set in contemporary Delhi amid a manmade ecological collapse.

"My father and I don't share an agent, or a publisher, but those facts aren't going to signify with anyone else. All the same, it's important to me to know I am not simply being published or reviewed for reasons of lineage rather than achievement," he says.

"In India, I've sadly come to think it is unavoidable. Outside India, fortunately, it's a different story. When I met my current publisher [from British publishing house John Murray], it was immediately clear that he had no idea who my father was. He wanted to publish The Tiger's Share because he liked it, and for no other reason. That was a moment of great relief for me," says Guha.