If you are a regular reader of Diagonal Days -- and if you are, here is a special kiss for you 👄 -- then you might be curious to know how this comic strip came to be.
It all started with a comic short story I wrote for a short story competition run by a leading Indian newspaper. It was called The Cock, the Bull and the Dentist.
It was a cock and bull story that unusually also happened to involve a dentist. And the cock in question had pretensions to being a parrot. And the bull happened to be a cow, on alternate days. Nope, it did not win the prize. The prize went to a horribly serious and intellectual story where everyone has a miserable time and dies in the last paragraph. The sort of folk who judge these competitions are very serious people.
No matter. I loved the characters I had created in this story so much -- it was the first appearance of the neighborhood called Diagonal Lane and the nutcases who live in it: Mr. Murthy the stern bureaucrat, Mr. Reddy the bank manager with eccentric hobbies, Malati the cow-bull, Murugan the weak-headed milkman -- that I went on to write a whole set of short stories about Diagonal Lane. I invented further characters -- Mrs. Reddy the avant-garde celebrity cook, Damodar the would-be detective, Brigadier Thimappa, the army man with a roving eye, Vera the ex-ballerina, an émigrée from Soviet Russia, Madhuri the failed Bollywood background singer...
I wrapped it up in a short story collection called Diagonal Lane – Cock and Bull Stories from an Erratic Neighborhood. I sent it around to all the big publishers and agents. Nope. I sent it to small publishers and agents. Nope.
No matter. I decided to write a full novel about Diagonal Lane. This eventually became Death on Diagonal Lane. It was a comic murder mystery, where Mr. Reddy, the key character of most of the Diagonal Lane stories stories, spends most of the novel being dead. But despite that, he manages to be central to the story.
I sent it around again. Nope.
No matter. I wrote a sequel. The Vitusakan Papers, later retitled The Hasyadatta Hoo Haa. Unlike the previous books, it was highly political -- almost a satire on current Indian politics. The ugly world of contemporary politics raising its loathsome head in the eccentric idyll of Diagonal Lane. This time, I actually got responses from publishers. They said they loved it. But when it came to publishing it, they developed cold feet. I guess it was too political, and publishing political satire in India is risky business nowadays.
But then... GLORY BE!!!! ... I got a response from Hachette India almost six months after I had submitted the second novel. They wanted to publish Death on Diagonal Lane.
And so DODL got published...
https://www.hachetteindia.com/Home/bookdetails/Info/9789391028572/death-on-diagonal-lane
I waited for the money to start rolling in. I waited for the Booker nomination. The Pulitzer nomination. Nope.
No matter. To publicize the book, I started a new comic strip on my blog. Diagonal Days, featuring all the loonies of Diagonal Lane. Previously I had been drawing a strip called Featherbottom, which I rather liked. But since my day job doesn't leave me enough time to do two comic strips, I had to regretfully give Featherbottom the heave ho. You might like to check out Featherbottom in the archives:
https://pen-slinger.blogspot.com/search/label/Featherbottom
DODL sales refused to budge. Diagonal Days viewership stayed stubbornly at about 2000 views a month.
No matter. By this time I had gotten quite into my new comic strip. I decided it would be the new graphic sequel to the Diagonal Lane books.
Then the AI madness happened. I wove that into my story. Overnight, the viewership jumped. Then a madman in a big whitish house started doing not-so-white things. It made me furious, but it was great comic material. I wove that into the story. I inserted Wash-X the AI washing machine into the story. I turned Mr. Murthy into Adequateman. Viewership EXPLODED!!
Yup, dear readers, as of today, almost 700,000 of you discerning, clever, folk with very good taste read my comic strip every month, and the number grows daily. Clearly, many of you kind folk are telling your friends about my blog, and they in turn are telling their friends, and so on... In the last eight months, we have managed -- you and I -- 2.2 MILLION hits on my blog.
A couple of months ago, I started Season 2 of the AI stories, with South American characters, in deference to the huge popularity of my strip in South and Central America. The last few episodes have featured a Colombian gent called Lucho Palomino, who happens to be a Shakira über-fan (a little bit like me). But don't worry, Adequateman, Wash-X and all the old Diagonal Lane characters will enter the story soon. And maybe even -- ahem -- Shakira herself?
In the meantime, I reworked Season 1 of the AI stories into a graphic novel called Shetty and the AI Washing Machine. I had to completely redraw a lot of the earlier episodes which I had drawn in a hurry, add a number of fillers episodes where there were gaps in the story, and edit and polish the text and graphics of the rest of the episodes. A lot of work, but it got done eventually. I sent it around to publishers and agents. I actually got promising responses from a couple. Let us see... fingers crossed. It is early days yet. If and when it gets published, you will be the first to hear.
In the meantime, what you can do is to buy the only Diagonal Lane book that is currently available: Death on Diagonal Lane.
Here is more info about it:
Death on Diagonal Lane
Blurb:
A Dark Comedy Wrapped in A Detective Novel
Diagonal Lane is thrown into turmoil when old Mr. Reddy is found dead in suspicious circumstances. Friendly neighbor Mr. Murthy attempts to keep the police out of it. Friendly neighbor Mr. Shetty bungles it up, and the police do get involved. The police officer who lands up to investigate turns out to be Mr. Murthy’s old school chum: Sub Inspector Ratty Gowda. A stroke of good fortune? Not really. You see, Ratty is a sub inspector on the make, one who itches to get the sub off his title and his name in the yellow headlines. He proceeds to put the denizens of Diagonal Lane through the wringer. It takes all of Mr. Murthy’s tact and diplomacy to prevent his childhood chum from putting behind bars all the leading lights of the lane. But meddling too much in murky police affairs, even for purely public-spirited reasons, can sometimes backfire. It does not take Mr. Murthy long to appreciate veracity of that old adage: Policemen have no friends.
A dark comedy on contemporary middle-class India. A sardonic whodunit that lays bare how these sort of things really happen in life-as-we-know-it, rather than in the comforting, otherworldly pages of Agatha Christie.
If you wish to be horribly intellectual about it, you can consider this book to be a somber satire on the Indian middle class.
But if, like most of us, you are just looking for a fun read for a lazy afternoon, you will find here a light farce with scintillating repartee, barmy characters and a Kafkaesque plot that piles absurdity on absurdity.
Excerpt:
CHAPTER 1: Mr. Reddy kicks the bucket
Mr. Reddy, my rheumy-eyed, half-bald, dim-witted neighbor, had had his scarecrow feet trembling on the verge of the bucket so many long years – ever since I knew him, in fact – that it came as a bit of a shock when he eventually kicked it.
News of his passing beyond the tattered veil was first brought home to me by the banging on my front door, in the small hours. Letting go of movie superstar Radhika, whom I was attempting to hoist above my head as part of a complicated choreographed dance move on the cold, misty slopes of Kodaikanal, I lurched upright on my cold, bare bachelor cot. Correctly identifying the muted thumping sound as emanating from my front door and not, as I initially presumed, from the buxom body of superstar Radhika crashing and careening down a Kodaikanal cliff, I put a leg over the side and located my rubber flip-flops. I noted the time on the luminous arms of the wall clock. It was 2AM. The banging continued apace, in time with my beating heart. I shambled up, stumbled through my cold, bare bachelor apartment as quickly as I could and put a sleepy, fearful eye to the spyglass.
Mrs. Reddy stood without in the dim light of the landing, her graying hair a frazzled halo around her pinched, wild-eyed face.
Despite the hour being two, she was dressed to the nines. Figure draped in rich purple silk sari, lips coated aubergine-pink, hair fashionably done up and highlighted with lilac ribbon: she looked not unlike a slim, attractive eggplant. An eggplant, though, with something on its mind.
‘Mr. Murthy!’ she squawked, adding voice-over to the sound effects. If I did not move fast, she would wake up all the neighbors. I yanked hard on the sticky latch and threw open the door.
‘Here I am,’ I said, for there I was. I had no secrets from the Reddys.
‘Oh there you are. You took your own sweet time.’
‘I was sleeping.’
‘A fine time to sleep. And here the world is turning upside down.’
‘This is the time one habitually sleeps, madam. It is 2AM in the morning. What seems to be the trouble?’
‘The trouble! The world has turned upside down, that’s all!’
‘Yes, but in what precise way?’
‘In the precise way that the old duffer’s gone and died on me, the fool.’
‘The who has done what?’ I gabbled. One is not at one’s brightest at 2AM.
‘The duffer!’ repeated Mrs. Reddy, cutting the first few steps of an agitated eggplant quadrille. ‘He’s dead. Expired. Given up the ghost.’
‘Mr. Reddy?’
‘Yes, yes, yes. How many duffers do you know?’
‘Dead?’
‘As a brinjal.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘He is cold. He does not move.’
‘He might have fainted.’
‘I stuck a pin into him. Nothing.’
‘Let me check…’
I hurried into her apartment. Mrs. Reddy followed me, muttering. ‘I told that old soup strainer not to pop off without forty-eight hours advance notice,’ I heard her say. ‘Would he listen? No. Not to the end, he wouldn’t. And what in the name of holy chop suey was he thinking, conking out at this ungodly hour? Couldn’t he have chosen a more convenient time? Inconsiderate to the very end, that noodle head. He always was a bit of a runny omelet, but this time he’s really laid an egg. ’
…and so on and so forth... the rest of the novel is just as good (or bad). If you liked the above excerpt, you'll love the novel. This is not one of those novels that have a great first couple of chapter and then fizzle out like a damp squib. It bangs on like this from the first page to the last, with unbelievable twists and turns and laugh-aloud jokes on every page (don't take my word for it, everyone who has read it says so, even people I don't know). Of course, this type of humor is not for everyone. This novel is aimed at a particular sort of reader. The sort of reader who loves P.G. Wodehouse, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, The Goon Show... as well as Indian humor writers like R.K. Narayan. Essentially, early 20th century British humor with an Indian touch. If you like that sort of thing, you'll like my book.
Buy it:
You might find it in your favorite bookshop, if they have good taste.
Otherwise you will get it on Amazon India (eBook and Paperback):
On Amazon US (eBook, Paperback dispatched from India):
And on all the other Amazons. Just search for "Death on Diagonal Lane" on your regional Amazon.
Also on Google books (only the eBook):
https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Death_on_Diagonal_Lane
You can also buy it from an Indian bookseller, Midland Books, who will ship it anywhere in the world at a lower cost than Amazon (can't confirm this).
https://www.midlandbookshop.com/en/product/death-on-diagonal-lane
You can also find it on eBay, Abe Books, Flipkart, and a number of other places.
