At Krishna Nagar in east Delhi, Pathak sits back in a leather chair in a study lined with English thrillers, by Jeffrey Archer, Christie, Jack Higgins, Ian Fleming. He has just finished his 246th potboiler, writing it with an old-fashioned Wing Sung fountain pen in illegible cursive writing that will require a magnifying glass to read. “I can’t think of a sentence till I hold a pen in my hand,” he gives a wide smile, resting his arm on sheets of hand-cut paper waiting for No. 247, “Computers are for filing income-tax returns.” If his publisher Raja Pocket Books accepts his latest thriller before April, Pathak will just have to factor in a few more lakhs of rupees on that I-T form. A small discomfort. But Pathak, has figured out a more important formula: “Here is the secret behind writing a murder mystery: take six suspects, make them revolve around a case, then eliminate them one by one,” he says, adjusting his cordless hearing aid. “The rest is the magic of permutation and combination.”

It is a raw magic that sells over 50,000 copies in each print, and sometimes calls for three-four reprints. Two-thirds of each print run is sold in the Hindi-speaking belt of Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgrah, and the rest in Punjab and Haryana. “We don’t have any grand advertisements. Word of mouth works well for us. At best, an ad might surface in a cheap magazine that you leaf through while getting a haircut under a tree,” laughs Pathak, who worked in the Hindi promotions projects of the Indian Telephone Industries till 1998.

... contd.