I interviewed two authors at this year's edition of the The Hindu's Lit for Life. One of them was a writer in the old-fashioned, books sense of the word: Shamya Dasgupta, who's authored Don't Disturb the Dead: The Story of the Ramsay Brothers. The other "writer" was Karan Johar, and the quotation marks aren't so much to exclude the filmmaker from the literary community as to acknowledge the fact that he isn't primarily a writer. He's more of a screenwriter, a column writer, and now, a co-author (with Poonam Saxena) of his memoir, An Unsuitable Boy.
The point I wish to discuss in this column is that both are books about the Hindi film industry, and both books are in English. And the point that makes me want to discuss this is the comments section under my YouTube videos (and, sometimes, on Facebook and Twitter), whenever I conduct an interview with a Tamil-film personality in English. These comments are usually a variation on this sentiment: "This is somebody from the Tamil film industry. Why don't you talk in Tamil?" (The sentiment isn't always expressed this politely, but this is the gist.)
So here are some thoughts – and though I use the example of Tamil cinema, I really mean all non-Hindi cinema (and not just from south India) that is confined, largely, to the pockets of people that speak the language.
I don't know if there are easy answers, but my question is just why we aren't seeing more writing in English about non-Hindi films. I'd love to be at a national-level literary conclave tomorrow and see a huge turnout for a Tamil-film personality who's written a book in English (or a book that's been translated into English) and become a countrywide bestseller.