Keep Off the Grass

HarperCollins Publishers India is to add another debutant bestseller to its existing list. Keep of the Grass by Karan Bajaj has run into its 3rd print run within 3 months of its release in June 2008, with selling over 15,000 copies.

The book has already sold its local language rights and the foreign rights have been bought by Serendipity Inc, a major New York based literary agency.

The book got a remarkable interest from Bollywood. The author confirmed offers from UTV production house (makers of popular films like Jodhaa Akbar, Namesake and Rang De Basanti) and Kunal Kohli (director of cult-hits like Hum Tum and Fanaa). The terms are being negotiated right now and the author is hopeful of finalizing a deal shortly.

The book was first launched in Delhi on May 31, 2008 commencing the 5 city tour of the author.

About Keep off the Grass:
What do you do when you are a twenty-five-year-old Yale graduate making half-a-million dollars a year as a hotshot investment banker on Wall Street? You bust your ass and become a millionaire by thirty, of course.

Not if you are Samrat Ratan, born in the USA to immigrant Indian parents; you quit and enrol in business school in India instead. Samrat's rollercoaster journey begins at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Bangalore, where he spends his time getting high on marijuana while his grades – and self-confidence – plummet. Soon, Samrat's quest for identity turns increasingly bizarre as it takes him places he hadn't planned on visiting – prison, for example – and makes him do things he hadn't banked on doing: 'meditating' stoned with a sexy Danish hippie in the Himalayas, hanging out with a cannibal on the banks of the Ganga, and peddling soap to the formidable Raja Bhaiya in Benares.

Does Samrat – Yale valedictorian, investment banker, convict, pothead – survive his fall from grace? Read Karan Bajaj's hilarious, yet introspective debut novel to find out.

Fiction/ Paperback/ 272 pp/ Rs 195

About the Author:
Karan Bajaj is a management consultant for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Washington D.C. He graduated from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore in 2002 where he was selected as one of the top ten young business leaders of India by the Aditya Birla Foundation. Karan has earlier worked as a Brand Manager for Procter & Gamble in India, the Philippines, Singapore and the U.S., and was nominated a 'Top 40 under 40 marketer in the U.S.' by Advertising Age in 2007. Born in 1979 into an Army family, Karan studied in various schools in Delhi, Shimla, Ranchi, Jabalpur, Lucknow and Assam. His interests in backpacking, hiking, reading and philosophy are key writing inspirations.