I don’t think you should miss Aaraamthinai’s two-part interview[Part 1 and 2] with Badri Seshadri. It’s been sometime since the interview was published and it was only today I was able to read it.
Badri’s reply to the straight forward questions were as usual, very logical. He was spot-on about non-existence of competition in Tamil publishing circles and govt’s help for books publishers. Except that he was a little aggressive about the questions on tamil literature books. I wasn’t expecting Badri to be blunt with those answers, rather I should say it was a little shocking to hear that from Badri.
On a different note, recently Badri has become the face of Tamil Blogging. Whenever there is a snippet news or a covery story on Tamil blogging, they must be saying, “Call Badri”. Part of the reason is that he is Chennai and is easily reachable. Just like how Kribs [No comparison though] was there in every single blogging meeting or roadshow. While for someone new to blogging, it may be interesting but for bloggers who read stuff day in and out, it gets pretty boring to keep hearing the same person talk about blogging in main stream media.
In any case, if you have been watching the Tamil Publishing scene for the last couple of years, you couldn’t avoid but notice Kizhakku Pathippagam‘s birth and growth. They came in with a bang. Especially with Tamil blogging picking up and people who were involved in Kizhakku were bloggers, they had a good word-of-the-blog publicity. Also their marketing and quality of books were impressive. More impressive were line-up of books they got in. They published the entire list of Ashokamitran and Aathavan, sparing a couple of books. And they already published around 150 books to their credit. And that’s good going.
kirukkal.com 
5 responses to “Badri Seshadri’s Interview – Aaraamthinai”
Don’t have a life. DOn’t have any friends. Listen to Clive Bull on London’s LBC 97.3 or at lbc.co.uk.
Don’t dote.
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lazy,
Yaarindha keppel karadi? Thalayum puriyala kaalum puriyala?
sapphani
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Hi. To compensate for not publishing much of original creative literature in Tamil, we have embarked on two projects:
1. Translating a fair number of literary books from Malayalam to Tamil
2. An even bigger project – translating top literary content from various Indian languages into English. Our English imprint(s) should start publishing books from September onwards.
On (2), we have started on all of Ashokamithran, Indira Parthasarathy, Adhavan, and so on.
We are also looking at bringing a lot of world literature (English, Spanish, French etc.) into Tamil in an organized manner.
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Badri,
Looks like there is a lot going on thatn what’s said to the outside world.
I think the translation of tamil literature to english is a great step and a welcoming move. After all whenever we read a good Ashokamitran story, one would feel, when will the outside read such stories in english. I never knew this was already in progress.
On bringing books from Mal to Tamil, welcoming move again. After we dont get to read O V Vijayan or Basheer in Tamil. All thats available are the english versions.
Again, mentioning of what you have stated in the interview was just to say that I didn’t expect you state that KP team wasn’t interested in Tamil Lit. Atleast thats the sense I got from the interview. Thanks for the explanation.
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hi,LG
good to read abt aaraamthinai and Badri.
Apart from
Asokamithran and Indhira Parthaarathy
I saw more
informative books during my visit to Kizakku pathippagam.
They are much more interseting (to me)
than just stories.I congratulate
you and Gilli
good to read goodstuff.
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