“Being in South India, it was unimaginable to me that people could survive without rice. There was a notion that North Indians only ate rotis,” he laughs. While Gandhi didn’t write out his preferences, his office did reply a month and half later. “It was the pen-pal generation and I wanted to befriend the high and mighty as an eighth grader,” Suspi says.
These and many such heartwarming stories of growing up in India’s small towns in the 1980s are part of ‘Half Pants, Full Pants’ — Suspi’s first novel that he confesses to have written “accidentally, while shuttling between Mumbai and Gurgaon running an ad agency.”
The book has two sections. ‘Half Pants’ has stories leading up to Suspi in class seven and the other section titled ‘Full Pants’ has stories from his high school days. What started as a writing exercise in 2011 turned into a full-fledged, nostalgia filled book of memories by 2012.
There was even talk of taking the stories to the small screen, thanks to his former colleague at Lowe Lintas and fellow adman and filmmaker R Balki. But in spite of interest from various corners, and knocking at the doors of big publishing houses, the book remained under wraps. Somehow, the dots didn’t connect for nearly five years.
That was until last year when Bengaluru-based beverage company Hector Beverages, the maker of the Paper Boat brand of nostalgia infused traditional Indian drinks, decided to publish Suspi’s book as part of building its publishing business. Hector Beverages has been reprinting classics like ‘Three Men In A Boat,’ ‘Jungle Book’ and ‘Ramayana’ since 2015. By offering a platform to new authors under Paper Boat Publishing, the company is hoping to increase consumer engagement. The era of verticalisation of businesses is witnessing a change, says brand expert Harish Bijoor.
“Brands now are more horizontal and constantly looking to connect oblique links to the best advantage.” The aim, he says, is to synergise the ethos of a business with a new addition.
“With ‘Half Pants, Full Pants,’ we came a full circle, as Suspi’s book mirrors our brand of nostalgia and memories,” says Parvesh Debuka, marketing head at HectorBeverages. The process of meeting the author, reading the manuscript, editing and printing took nine months.
Now, the company is drawing up a plan to distribute the book through online and offline channels. “Depending on the feedback that we get for the book, we will devise a plan for the coming years.”
Source: Economic Times