Penguin India took the publishing world by surprise with the announcement that CEO David Davidar would be leaving in January 2004 to take over as publisher of Penguin Canada.

The reins at Penguin India will be handed over to Thomas Abraham, currently the general manager (marketing). Abraham will take over as president.

Ravi Singh and V K Karthika, both old hands at Penguin, will share Davidar's publishing responsibilities as executive editors.

Davidar had hinted when his debut novel, House of Blue Mangoes, came out in 2002 that he might not be a permanent fixture at Penguin.

However, it appears to have been his publishing career rather than his fledgling writing career that has prompted this migration, after over 18 years with the publishing house.

Davidar sounds upbeat about his new appointment, "Canada is one of the most interesting markets in the world -- very multicultural, and it has produced some of the world's literary superstars."

The number of Indians at senior levels in the global publishing industry is limited. There's Sonny Mehta at Knopf, and at a somewhat lower editorial level, Ravi Mirchandani at Heinemann, and Ayesha Pandey at Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.

Davidar's appointment could send out a signal of sorts to the publishing world that Indian writers aren't all they should be exporting.

Asked whether Penguin India would suffer because the literary 'brand' was so strongly identified with him, Davidar said: "I think that's a mistake. I do little to foster that image."

He said he was confident that Penguin would be in good hands, an opinion shared by John Makinson, CEO of Penguin Worldwide.

By end-2003, depending on the competition provided by other publishers, we will know whether Davidar's migration will have that ubiquitous black-and-white bird's wings clipped or whether it will continue to soar.