The news of Geetanjali Shree becoming the first Indian author to win the International Booker Prize instantly triggered a memory about my tangential connection with her some 21 years ago. That was the time when my Fremont, California-based multimedia company and publishing house Literate World had just launched what was the world’s first multilingual literary web portal.
We began by offering news and trends in Hindi, Spanish and English literature, the world's three biggest languages then. The plan was to have a total of 15 top global languages and make Literate World the first and the only resource of its kind for global literature. The beginning was spectacular as within the first three months of the launch we began drawing in over a million unique visitors. Bear in mind this was in 2000 end and 2001 start, four years before YouTube came into being. I mention it because it was around 2005 after YouTube’s launch that the idea of an eyeball economy began to strike roots, the idea that visitors coming to one’s website were a potential lucrative asset.
To think that a multilingual literary web portal could attract a million-plus daily visitor without any hyper marketing was extraordinary. If I had managed to stay the course, I and my former colleagues would have been very rich. But that is another story.
The reason for this background is to explain how I came to be tangentially connected to Geetanjali Shree. The Hindi literary portal’s staff was mainly based in New Delhi. It included young professionals such as Rajesh Ranjan, Sangeeta and Neelima working under a sharp supervision by Preeti Verma from Fremont. The overall Delhi operation was overseen by the publisher KPR Nair whose strong network led to LW being launched by India’s then Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh on December 24, 2001 at the India International Centre.
Soon enough we started enlisting leading Hindi writers such as the late Nirmal Verma, the late Kamleshwar and the late Rajendra Yadav. These were giants of Hindi literature and to get them interested in LW was quite a task. It was the exceptional hard work done by Rajesh, Sangeeta and Neelima that we managed to rope in these stellar names both as interview subjects as well occasional contributors. Among the relatively new but widely celebrated names then was that of Geetanjali Mishra. Sangeeta wrote a brief but excellent profile of hers for the LW website. (See above).
In fact, apart from Literate World carrying a profile of hers, she also wrote six pieces for us over a few weeks. So when I read the news of her winning the International Booker for the English translation of her novel ‘Tomb of Sand’, originally titled ‘Ret Samadhi’ and translated by Daisy Rockwell, I reached out to Rajesh to confirm that she indeed wrote for Literate World.
The only point I am making is that there was a time when one did something that was in a way an unprecedented online contribution to the world of global literature.