There’s something that’s always been part of the Western publishing landscape, which is now seeping into India as well. It’s called elitism. You know, the attitude of a few that literary authors who write one book in five years are special and talented, and crime writers or those horrible romance writers who “churn out a book a year” don’t deserve to be read. The scratching of the head ensues when Dan Brown’s books sell millions and your friend, the avid reader, has never heard of Rohinton Mistry.

“Popular fiction” has become something to be mocked, looked down upon, and readers of it regarded with distaste. This is something that’s prevalent in music (”Celine Dion fans are ignorant and don’t know good music”) and in India, at least, everyone’s favorite punching bag is the author Chetan Bhagat.

Now before I go further, let me tell you about my reading choices. Well, everything. I grew up reading Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie, and the Nancy Drew series, moved on to those wondrous romance novels, graduated to chick lit and crime fiction, and now read pretty much everything under the sun, including Rohinton Mistry, Marian Keyes, Amy Tan, Harlan Coben, Haruki Murakami, Pankaj Mishra, Cormac McCarthy, Tom Robbins, Taslima Nasrin, Arundhati Roy, Jennifer Weiner, Sidney Sheldon, Amitav Ghosh, Nisha Minhas, Jhumpa Lahiri, and the back of my juice box. In fact, I’ll try any writer once.

I did pick up a Chetan Bhagat book a couple of years ago, didn’t really enjoy the story or the writing, and hence, didn’t buy any more. Purely personal taste, nothing against the author or his genre. I’m just not a young twenty-something Indian working in a multinational company and have already answered for myself the questions Bhagat’s characters are asking, so I don’t identify with their struggles. I also didn’t like the writing style.

But does that mean Bhagat’s books don’t deserve to be published? Does that mean all his readers are classless brainless idiots? No, of course not. One of his books just got made into a major movie, and he’s got hundreds of thousands of fans. Can we really say that hundreds of thousands of people don’t know what makes a good story or good book?

And what is a good book anyway? Isn’t it something that speaks to you, moves you, or just makes you laugh? Who am I to tell anyone that Arundhati Roy should move them or speak to them more than Chetan Bhagat? Who am I to say that reading a novel about sixteenth century China is a better way to spend an afternoon than reading a novel about a woman in LA who can’t find love?

This article in the Indian Express caught my attention as I was pondering these issues a couple of weeks ago. For those of you who’ve been around me for a while, you know how mad I get when someone uses multiple exclamation marks, so the fact that a published author would say, “Grammatical errors, spelling mistakes doesn’t (sic) matter that much. I am not writing a (sic) literature,” makes me want to poke a hot knife in my eye only so that the pain of that can erase the pain of this sentence, but this author is a bestselling writer and his book is in the eighth print run (whatever that means; what if they’re only printing 1,000 copies per run?). Will I read him? No, absolutely not. Will I look down upon people who do? No, never.

I understand that publishers and authors have a responsibility to their readers to give them a quality product, and by quality I do mean not completely abusing the English language, but I do have a problem with people who look down upon readers who choose to read something that the literati don’t approve of (yes, I’m looking at you, Maureen Dowd).

As readers, we should demand quality standards from our publishers, but don’t hate the author. Good on them if they were able to take that risk of sitting down and writing an entire book despite their lack of sophistication of language and then actually get it published and sold. I’m guessing these authors (the Indian ones) aren’t raking in the millions, so it’s important to understand that there is a market for their work and that they’re able to tap into it. But I just don’t understand the hatred against Bhagat on Twitter and other social media. So you don’t think he’s a good writer and shouldn’t be as popular as he is. Um, so?

As writers we work by and because of market forces every day. What the masses are reading and what they may or may not like is an important factor in what we’re able to sell. Can we really afford to look down on millions and say their taste doesn’t matter?

I, for one, can’t and don’t want to. I don’t like Bhagat’s books and won’t be reading them, but isn’t it a tremendous achievement that his books got people talking, and more than that, reading again?

As a writer, I’d like one day for my books to be able to do the same.