Have you read Kiran Nagarkar’s older books? He’s one of those rare writers who write well in two languages.

*Is there one already, somewhere else, maybe?

Secondly, even the overdone diaspora theme has a lot of unexplored territory left for writers of great talent. As a 54-year old “Mr. Ganguly” who has lived in the US since 1973 and lived the desi evolution, I know of issues and experiences that have not been touched by writers yet. You guys are right in the sense that there is a beaten path that the writers seem to follow, but given time, there will be the great ones who will bring new facets of the desi experience to light.

The upshot of this is that when someone writes a great book, original, fresh and well written, you reject it because the themes you detect make you feel jaded. I’d rather invest my judgment in the quality of the writing. If a great novel is written about XYZ of desi life in the diaspora, written well with originality and intelligence and subversion, the extension of your argument is that it’s a lesser novel than a F grade novel that is badly written but deals with themes you find novel.

Can the lack of new themes not also be seen as another symptom that something is wrong with Indian writing in english? If everything was okay, I’d expect a much broader distribution in terms of ideas, themes, scope, styles, but that does not seem to be happening.

That, I would suggest, is down to either:

(a) A lack of genuine writing talent at the present moment

(b) The tendency of publishers to seek and publish lesser talents who conform to templates and stereotypes to be sold to the broadest possible markets.

I would say that (b) is the most likely reason — hence the mango-spice genre of second rate writing that is accepted and published so much by London and New York publishers.

But the thing is, 90% of all books published anyway are nothing special and generally cliche ridden works of mediocrity anyway, desi writers will be no different.

I think there’s a certain amount of self-absorption behind it, and a feeling that one’s brownness in a white land is enough to qualify one’s story as interesting

There’s always going to be a certain degree of self-absorption in literature. I agree with your final point though, but would say that that is more about the laziness of bad writers and bad publishers too.

I am not so sure that the theme can be excised entirely when judging a book. Can the lack of new themes not also be seen as another symptom that something is wrong with Indian writing in english? If everything was okay, I’d expect a much broader distribution in terms of ideas, themes, scope, styles, but that does not seem to be happening. I think there’s a certain amount of self-absorption behind it, and a feeling that one’s brownness in a white land is enough to qualify one’s story as interesting.