For months until he became President, Mr Trump promoted my first book left, right and centre on Facebook, Twitter and so on. Sales soared
In a few hours, I had created images of the great man holding my book, Hoyt’s War, instead of his own, The Art of the Deal. Fake photo created by C Y Gopinath without using Midjourney
I would not have thought in my wildest dreams that a great man like Mr Trump would agree to promote my first novel.
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To be honest, I wouldn’t even have imagined that I had a novel in me. But life has strange ways of surprising us.
It was 2005 when someone from HarperCollins emailed me to say that the copyright for my first book, a travelogue called Travels with the Fish, had reverted to me. The book was mine to do with as I pleased.
Like any indigent writer, I immediately wanted to go global. Dreaming of achieving fame and fortune like Paul Theroux, I sent a chapter to about 800 American literary agents. It was the one where I watch a sex show featuring some ping-pong balls and a bottle of Pepsi in Bangkok.
Hardly anyone even replied; a few thought that, for a brown-skinned boy, I had potential. However, one agent, Nathan Bransford, had loved the writing but didn’t think much of launching oneself internationally with a travel book. Did I, he wondered, have any plan to write a novel?
I murmured something about journalists not being so good at making up stories. Believe it or not, there was a time not long ago when that was true.
Eventually, embarrassed that Nathan had more faith in my writing than I did, I went to work. I had a half-formed story idea about an Indian who inherits a locked book with answers to the world’s problems but sells it to a kabadiwala because he doesn’t want to change the world.
What happened next? I had no clue.
But I tried. The result, after three years of strenuous labour, was The Book of Answers. It featured an average Indian called Patros Patranobis who keeps getting thrust, against his wishes, into confrontations with India’s most powerful man, the diabolical Ishwar Prasad.
Prasad, hell-bent on sowing confusion and chaos as elections approach, teams up with a godman who has used the book to proclaim himself as God’s messenger. They make a formidable team.
Prasad sets up a Ministry of Regrets to apologise for the mistakes and atrocities committed by his government.
He institutes a lucrative levy, sextroi, to tax one of India’s most popular nocturnal activities.
He bans the past tense to prevent people from dwelling on yesterday’s problems. As an afterthought, he bans the future tense as well, lest people start dreaming of a better future.
This crazy Orwellian book was published in 2011. I was thrilled. In 2012, it was nominated for the Commonwealth Book Prize for Best Fiction. I was over the moon.
There was a small downside—it sold abysmally. No one seemed to know it even existed, lost in the bottom shelves of a world that had forgotten how to read and preferred videos and quick summaries.
Nathan was distraught that we couldn’t get a world launch. The depression, he said, had made American publishers risk-averse; they found my story too, well, “Indian”.
I decided, unreasonably, that my only choice was to rewrite my book as an American story. Patros became Daniel Hoyt; Mumbai became New York; the circus town of Tellicherry, in Kerala, became Gibsonton, Florida. I used Google’s street view, spending hours prowling the digital streets of cities I had never been to, like Miami. Ishwar Prasad became Barry Codbag.
I self-published Hoyt’s War in 2015 on Amazon, where it remains a steady seller to this day.
Mr Trump, God bless his incandescent soul, was an unknown when I began writing about President Barry Codbag in my book. But on June 15, the man rode down his golden escalator, announcing his candidacy. In no time, he was treating us to his amazing philosophies and alternate realities, founded on his deep knowledge of the universe. It quickly became obvious that Mr Trump was the living incarnation of President Codbag in Hoyt’s War.
I had no time to lose. ChatGPT was years away but I knew a trick or two in Photoshop. In a few hours, I had created images of the great man holding my book, Hoyt’s War, instead of his own, The Art of the Deal.
Next, I set up a fake news site, washingtonpsst.com, a perfect mirror image of the Washington Post, with live links to real WP stories.
Donald slams book based on Trump-like President, calls author ‘scumbag freeloader’.
Trump says porn is okay but sex needs to be taxed.
King Donald the First? Trump says USA is ready for monarchy.
For months, until Mr Trump ascended the throne, it was party time for me, with the great man promoting my book left, right and centre on Facebook, Twitter and so on. Sales soared, easily hitting hundreds.
But then he became the leader of the free world. Out of deep respect for Mr Trump and deep fear of the CIA, I stopped the campaign.
You are wondering: did Mr Trump ever agree to promote my humble book? If you asked him, of course, he’d say NEVER! in all capitals on Truth Social.
But then, Donald Trump has done so many things that he later denied doing.
You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com
Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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