By his own admission, Kumar’s writing has changed over the years. “Earlier, there would be all sorts of description. The sun rose, the wind blew, that sort of thing,” he says. “Now, nobody has patience for that kind of thing. So I jump right into the action.”
Next to his writing room is the unofficial Rajesh Kumar archive—a little storeroom exploding with his published novels. Books sit in teetering piles on the floor, or cram themselves into shelves. To pick one out, Kumar has to wade gingerly into the room to avoid stepping on books; it’s as if he were walking through a minefield. A few years ago, when his publisher threw him a party to mark the publication of his 1,000th novel (“Many actors came—T. Rajendar, and also Vijayakanth!”), Kumar began to wonder if he was setting any sort of precedent.
Through a fellow Coimbatore resident—a gentleman whose bid for the world record in walking backwards ended abruptly at 7km—he applied to the Guinness World Records to be recognized as the world’s most prolific novelist.
Genre lives on
“They’ve responded that my books aren’t strictly as long as the novels in the West, but that they could be considered short novels, or novellas,” the novelist says. “We’re still discussing that point, but they are certainly interested.”
Kumar dismisses any talk of an imminent decline of the genre. “People still read, don’t they? As long as they travel by buses and trains, they will buy these books to read,” he says. Then, after mentioning that he’d once met a university vice-chancellor who avidly read his books, he launches into what is obviously a favourite, much-told anecdote.
“Back when we built this house, this part of Coimbatore was still deserted, cut off from the city,” Kumar says. Today, a well-maintained white Zen sits on his equally well-maintained driveway. But in 1989, when he was still working a full-time job as a sales executive, he drove to his office every day on a scooter.
One day, on a particularly lonely stretch of road, his scooter broke down, and the only help at hand was a boy, around 14 years old, driving a herd of goats ahead of him. “The boy told me there were some mechanics further down the road, and he offered to watch my scooter for me while I went to fetch them.”
As Kumar set off, he happened to look back once over his shoulder. “Out of his shirt pocket, the boy had pulled out a slim book,” he says. “And he sat down by the side of the road and began to read.”
Even from a distance, Kumar recognized the book.
It was a Rajesh Kumar novel.