.::Song Of The Little Road::.

Sudden Debt: A Blast From The Past

2011-08-11T22:19:00.000+05:30

Sudden Debt: A Blast From The Past: "I have been re-reading Gustave LeBon's The Crowd , the 1895 classic on the psychology of herd ('crowd') behavior. The French social psycho..."

On Music, GRE-TOEFL, And Other Sundry Things

2011-07-05T23:50:00.021+05:30

I find that I am increasingly obsessed with Indian (Semi-)Classical and spend hours listening to beautiful, brilliant songs. Perhaps, my only true wish currently is to learn some of this amazing musical legacy. And in a hypothetical exchange of fortunes, I would readily trade everything I have for mastery of this most beautiful of artistic forms. Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan once said, "If, in every home, one child was taught Hindustani classical music, this country would never have been partitioned." Of all generalizations in the world, I believe this to be most likely true.

On June 29, I gave the GRE - an exceptionally inane test that claims to gauge preparation for graduate studies. Quantitative was a cakewalk as expected. I lost a few points in verbal to some boring RCs. Finally ended up with Q:800 and V:680 Enjoyed writing essays after a really long time. I have planned to give this exam for some time now. Glad to have finally finished it off. Don't tell me new year's resolutions don't work!

I had a research section in the end in which I wrote an argument essay. Perhaps, the ETS wants to move the essays to the end of the test eventually, and wants to obtain statistical estimates of whether the scores in essays change if the section is moved to the end of the exam. Though the GRE is a fairly mundane test, the assiduity in maintaining the score norms of the standardized test is commendable, unlike in India where it is quite difficult to find policy decisions backed by hard statistics, especially in education.

I have recently shifted residence to the highest floor of Hostel 14, IIT Bombay, along with eight of my friends. My new accommodation has a nice view of the Powai Lake and the Hiranandani skyline. It's a nice place to spend the next one year.

Adiós!

Update (03/08/2011): Gave the TOEFL on 23 July. Scores came in today, almost a week before they were expected. With a decent score of 114, I can now tick off another of my new year's resolutions! Finally at the beginning of the end of apping...

Advice For People Considering CSE, IIT Bombay

2011-03-29T21:06:00.015+05:30

Update (28 September 2011):

From recent personal experience, my statements about placements in this blog are not true. Some of the consulting/finance/other-rubbish profiles are off-limits for graduate students even before any elimination rounds are conducted. Hence, if you are an ambitious careerist interested in being in the industry after your graduate studies and have admits from IIMs or good US/European universities, you might want to give IIT Bombay a miss for greener pastures. After almost a year and a half at IIT Bombay, I have realized that the institution is good only for academic rigor and some of the amazing professors that teach here (my favorites here). Such professors are exceptions to the norm but the situation might be better than anywhere else in the country.

The administration is thoroughly Indian; it sucks as usual. One of the amazing professors I mentioned in the earlier paragraph (Prof. Soumen Chakrabarti whose work has been cited in the PageRank/Google paper http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html) put up the following description of his 'Web Search and Mining' course on IIT Bombay's Course Management System: 'Main building still knows this course by the mouthful "Information Retrieval and Mining for Hypertext and the Web" in spite of requesting them to change the title over five times.'

~~Recently, there was a major case of food poisoning in three of the hostels affecting more than 1000 people in all, and nobody has taken up even moral responsibility for the fiasco!~~ The concerned caterer has been fired and a new caterer will take his place this semester.

Before coming to IIT Bombay, I was advised by three ex-IITians (the sane kind, not the ones that root for their alma mater even if they know what's wrong with it) not to go to IIT Bombay if I had (what are conventionally considered) better options. In hindsight, I realize they might have been right.

----x--x--x----

A query I received recently about studying at CSE, IIT Bombay:-

Dear Abhinav,

My name is Axxxx and I just got an AIR of 44 in GATE 2011 which means that I will probably get into the MTech CSE at IIT Bombay. I got your contact off the IIT website and I was wondering if you could help me out by sharing some of your experience. Your profile seemed interesting and I know I can trust somebody who gets XKCD.

So, how do you find the course compared to your BE at VJTI? (I'm from TSEC and really need a change in the level of teaching standards). What about life at IIT campus? And do you know anything about the placements scenario for MTech students? Is it on par with the BTech placements or is it not that good? I have an offer from Oxford University but I'm probably declining it as the UK visa rules are getting extremely annoying for anybody who wishes to gain work experience after their degree there (plus its bloody expensive!).

Anything that you can tell me will really help me in making this decision (IIT vs Oxford) better for me...

Regards,A B

My response to the query:-

I think I will set out the reasons for my decision to come to IIT Bombay. You must evaluate your situation, opportunities, and inclinations to come to your own decision.

I am fairly certain that I will end up either in academia, an R&D lab, or doing a startup. I joined IIT Bombay because I needed a stronger background to pursue a PhD, both in terms of my technical soundness and the reputation of the institution I was going to study at. I had admits from Uppsala for technical masters, and IIM Lucknow and Kozhikode for MBA, besides the IIT admits. I chose IIT Bombay because I was sure I would eventually get bored with standard management stuff (is that really work?), and (surprise, surprise!) I still liked CSE after I graduated from VJTI. I haven't really regretted my decision so far. IIT Bombay provides fabulous facilities and a beautiful campus, and is about an hour from my home.

VJTI, the institution where I spent my undergrad days didn't have a research culture to speak of. I don't really remember any worthwhile professors or well-taught subjects. In short, my undergrad education would amount to zilch for a person looking for rigorous foundations. Consequently, the difference between the UG/PG quality of education has been immense for me. At IIT Bombay, I have been taught and guided by some really great professors; some of them are forerunners in their particular areas of research. Prof. Bhaskar Raman (Systems and Networks) and Prof. Sunita Sarawagi (Machine Learning and Data Mining) are my personal favorites. Prof. Soumen Chakrabarti is also highly regarded and really knowledgeable, ~~but he did not click with me~~.

The graduate intake at CSE, IIT Bombay is much larger compared to other IITs. This is a good thing, because it leads to bigger research groups and you almost always have people who share similar research interests. It's a bad thing, because the class sizes increase beyond the desirable graduate class size (maximum ~20-30), leading to lesser attention of professors to each individual student. For better or for worse, the competition for getting into research groups and working under good guides also increases.

Also, IIT Bombay has a much more vibrant social life than other places like IISc and other IITs. It has great placements and a good reputation in case one wants to pursue research further. As far as I know, IIT Bombay has had good placements, but individual preparation and commitment are better indicators of the quality of placements one lands up with rather than past statistics. ~~From hearsay, the placement opportunities for MTech guys are at par with those for BTech guys except for some selective I-banks.~~

Correspondent's subsequent reply:-

Dear Abhinav,

Thanks for all that information. The one big factor for me wanting to choose IIT over Oxford was that there is very less research activity on distributed systems and machine learning at Oxford (they focus more on theoretical issues of computer science) but I found quite a few active projects at IIT. The only doubt in my mind was whether the MTech degree was good enough or not.

I have seriously been encouraged to go for IIT after hearing your story (and that of a couple of others). For some reason, I had an ill-formed view that MTech at IIT was inferior to the BTech degree (probably wrong feedback from some IIT undergrads).

I had read Prof. Raman's web pages before, and some faculty in my college were telling me about one Prof. Kavi Arya as well. Knowing that professors like these will be teaching us is really exciting.

I'll hope to meet you in a few months then (assuming of course that I get direct admission)... Good luck with your exams and stuff!

Thanks again.

Regards,
A B

My subsequent response:-

Hi Axxxx,

Due to lower competition, the quality of MTech batches in most departments at IITs is lower than BTech batches. That does lead to the currently prevalent perceptions.

However, for CSE, the keen competition does lead to a pretty decent batch, at least at IIT Bombay. I know of seniors who have been placed in Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, Credit Suisse, etc. or have gone to decent universities like CMU, UMD, etc. for their PhD. It really depends on the individual caliber of the student.

There is a difference between the BTech and MTech batches, because the BTechs receive rigorous training in fundamentals for four years. More importantly, BTechs have healthier attitudes toward learning and often ask a lot of questions in a class making it interactive and worthwhile. These are differences that cannot be wished away, but which many MTechs overcome through their first semester.

Regarding admissions, you most certainly will get a direct admit to IIT Bombay with AIR 44. Apply to two other IITs of your choice as a backup. I applied to all of them and never had to bother with admits from the other IITs.

--
Regards,
Abhinav Maurya

Advice for new matriculants:-

Hi All,

I hope you have settled well @ IIT Bombay. To those of you who contacted me earlier, my apologies for not having met you until now due to some other commitments.

The first semester at our department is a very hectic and important one. In most of the cases, performance in subjects of the first semester determines your seminar in the second semester, which usually leads to an MTP in the second year. The topic of your seminar and MTP need not be the same. So, the plan usually is exploration of CSE research areas and groups in the first semester, and consolidation/taking advanced courses in the second semester, finishing with the grand MTP later. In conclusion, your choice of courses now decides much of what you will be doing at IIT Bombay. So, please consider your choice carefully by attending as many lectures as possible until the registration closes.

Though there is the possibility of taking up seminar in the first semester, it is conventionally taken up by students in the second semester. This gives you a semester to familiarize yourself with the flavor of CSE research carried out at IIT Bombay.

Each research group often has introductory graduate courses whose grades are often used by professors in choosing a student for seminar/MTP. These should be clear in the fundae session to be organized soon.

There are certain "load-balancing" courses in the department. If you are really interested in CS and your reasons for coming here extend beyond the placements and the IIT tag, I suggest you to take courses that interest you and which are moderately difficult as per your current preparation. Your MTP is worth 90 credits and far outweighs the 60 credits of the courses you will take. Besides, liking a course makes it far easier to do better in the course.

For people interested in studies beyond the conventional CSE stuff offered in the department, you may want to explore Mathematics, Applied Statistics and Informatics, EE, and IEOR courses in later semesters. These departments often offer courses in niche areas that are closely related to CSE.

On deciding courses, you can take two courses offered by two research groups that interest you. For example, Foundations of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for AI-ML-Data-Mining people, Advanced Computer Networks and Network Security for Networks people, Program Analysis and Functional Programming for Systems and Compilers, etc. If you are completely undecided, you may wish to explore four different areas by taking one introductory graduate level course in each area. The final mix of courses is for you to decide. Kindly discuss with facad/any professor/me/any senior if you feel you need to talk about your choice of courses.

I hope to talk to you all at least once before the registration closes. On Monday, I will be in Circular Hall from 10:30 to 12:30 and then again from 15:30 to 17:30. If you are at KReSIT, please drop by. Please feel free to bug me at any point during the semester for any reason at all.

Have a great time at IIT Bombay. I am sure you will! :-)

2010-05-21T19:56:00.012+05:30

This blog is written in response to the turmoil and choices I have faced over the last year and over the last couple of weeks in particular. It serves to analyze the notions and meaning of education and the sheer difficulty of realizing it in the Indian context. Sometimes, the discussion here may be so generic, simplistic and undeserving of the people I quote that it may seem little thought has gone into shaping the arguments. Yet, in the consciousness of the average Indian, questions of this nature are very rudimentary and the preconceptions very rigid. I have come to believe that the arguments below are essential to how I understand certain things that I increasingly regard to be very important in life. Also, since I have written this piece primarily as an identification of various factors that affect Indian education, I realize that the treatment here is very informal and can do with a great deal of systematic elaboration.

I remember an American movie where there is this dialogue:

The purpose of college is to make one think.

I came across this line years ago, and have yet to find any other definition of education so comprehensive as to capture the essential theme of the process of education so succinctly. No matter what form education may take - from the informal brainstorming, workshops, seminars and apprenticeships that go by various names to the formal lecture series, theses and dissertations - the very crux of it all is to impart to the learner the ability to think. There is very little success in education unless all the effort is singularly directed at developing this ability for independent thought. A quote may serve to clarify the difficulty of realizing this ideal in the Indian context: "Education to the Indian middle class is largely a job ticket carried in a wallet, or a designer shirt flaunted at a party. Education is acquired and owned, it does not permeate and transform people."

In much of our educational process, the background or the reasons are often eclipsed by the actual topic of study. There is little realization that the purpose of studying the former may not just be plain curiosity, but also so that we can better anticipate and live through the changes in our times. The result is a highly misplaced emphasis on the statement of facts, without having to deal with the accompanying motivations. For example, a science textbook may talk at great length about a discovery or invention without adequately considering the background of necessity and the reasons that led to the said discovery or invention. Or a history textbook may talk about events like wars, peace treaties, etc. without happening to put forth and analyze any motivations that propelled the events. Or a work of fiction might place great emphasis on the plot and its twists and turns without having much of the turmoil that a character faces or the philosophical musings that characterize and capture for the reader a bygone time and place and that lend it the greatness that story-telling alone cannot. Though the past may seem very obvious to us, its changes were lived as a novelty by the people of those times. History shows how ill-prepared we always are for change, fumbling through our inventions and revolutions. Education that turns its back on the future while satiating its preoccupation with the past does not fulfill its purpose. We cannot view the future through the prism of the past, but it would be foolish to know the history of one's existence without knowing the reasons and the path of our greatness, the mistakes committed and the lessons learned therefrom. Yet this closed-door-closed-mind policy seems to be increasingly a problem with our nations, religions, and 'civilizations'.

Much greater is the problem when even the actual topic of study is not considered as important enough to be discussed as the fame and the aura surrounding it. An example of this inanity can be found here. The common man must rely on the media for understanding the many events that befall our little, crazy world. Unfortunately, the mediapersons are themselves so uninformed and quite often so full of mediocrity and the accompanying arrogance that little light is shed upon the essential aspects and the peripheral (mis)information is all that one can get. So, one could have watched a prominent journalist talk patronizingly to lawyer-minister Mr. Kapil Sibal, without having done his homework on the nuclear liability bill or the foreign universities' legislation or the right to education act. Or you could have seen the failure behind the coverage of the parliament proceedings in consideration of the finance bill (including the communist and other parties staging protests outside the parliament, the destruction of public property, the 'reform' of the Jharkhand government, and the murkiness of CBI waters) without the media taking a moment to put forth what exact change is proposed by the legislation and how is it supposed to make things better or worse for the aam aadmi.

Education is singularly about recognizing the questions as being equally important as the answers, if not more. When it is reduced to its basic form, instruction, it becomes a one-way street. Slowly, the teacher-student relationship is transformed into a pedagogue-follower one, and the interaction is poisoned with a lack of questions, atleast the 'whys'. At this point, there is very little to be had from further pursuit of such study except familiarity with the subject being studied. It is perhaps the worst form of education one can receive even when it is delivered in a highly refined manner. In India, we seem to be largely familiar with this and only this form, completely disregarding the two other pillars of education viz. research and facilitation/mentorship. The fact that we are saddled with shoddy instructors only makes matters worse. We do not seem to be alarmed at the complete lack in our educational system of the ability to ask essential questions, while we are concerned with exasperating and often unimportant details like saffronization of history textbooks and reservations. And then we wonder why we don't have internationally acclaimed institutions (commensurate with our populace) that produce world-class thinkers and innovators.

Another thing that we never seem to consider is how functional the entire educational system of our country is. We have a great heritage of arts, literature, mathematics, natural and social sciences from which we might claim whole new schools of thought, extremely rich, robust and comparable alternatives to the current lines of thought as existing in the West. Yet, the achievements of our educational institutions lie merely in understanding, replicating and propagating systems of thought and conduct of affairs borrowed from the West, and amongst these only those that have any immediate practical value. I am not in favour of lambasting the West and its educational heritage; my whole education (as that of most Indians who are considered literate/educated) has been in the pedagogic traditions laid down by the British. However, a generally widespread ignorance of the existence of Indian pre-colonial traditions of thought and an unwillingness to develop and incorporate these side by side with the Western legacy of education in the hallowed portals of even the best of our educational institutions is proof of how little we understand of our past. This functional approach to education is crippling and takes away from it many of the ideals that education tries to inculcate. In the essay 'Indian Traditions and the Western Imagination' from 'The Argumentative Indian', Amartya Sen argues:

While it is true that any useful knowledge gives its possessor some power in one form or another, this may not be the most remarkable aspect of that knowledge, nor the primary reason for which this knowledge is sought. Indeed, the process of learning can accommodate considerable motivational variations without becoming a functionalist enterprise of some grosser kind. An epistemic methodology that sees the pursuit of knowledge as entirely congruent with the search for power is a great deal more cunning than wise. It can needlessly undermine the value of knowledge in satisfying curiosity and interest; it significantly weakens one of the profound characteristics of human beings.

Our best institutions have sprung from the need for imparting professional education. So we have the IITs to deal with technology, IIMs to deal with management, and a recently strengthening string of national schools of law to deal with imparting legal education. These institutions lay claim to arguably the best minds in the country as far as 'talent' is concerned, as also the biggest share of state patronage in the form of funds allotted by the government to further the cause of education. Also, due to the tendency of good researchers to cluster at the best institutions, these schools have arguably the best faculty. However, all these institutions mainly impart education in the professional (read functional) spheres! We have yet to see comparable institutions that serve as centers of higher learning in liberal arts, performing arts, music, cinema (yes there is the overarching FTII, but what else), literature, philosophy (Every once in a while, one hears eminent colleges in Bombay shutting down this department due to a lack of students wanting to study philosophy.), political strategy and ethics, change in favour of social equity, etc. There are institutions that serve to understand these causes but they are fragmented islands of thought, often afflicted with dogma, corruption in ideals and practical affairs, and without the ability to connect to other schools of thought around the country and to bring about a constructive change in the society. Quite often, they might simply be 'educating' people with neither the academic rigor nor the inclination to question, change or innovate in their various streams of study, because a 'sharp' mind becomes accustomed in its very impressionable stage to the exclusive idea of the necessity of attending a professional school. Nothing can be sadder than this extremely functional approach to education, leading to the very slow but nevertheless persistent process of decay in many important areas of study and research.

The chemist Hofmann (who taught Perkins, father of the dyestuff industry and inventor of aniline mauve and mordants) in one of his addresses said,

Whenever one of your chemical friends, full of enthusiasm, exhibits and explains to you his newly discovered compound, you will not cool his noble ardour by asking him that most terrible of all questions: 'What is its use? Will your compound bleach or dye? Will it shave? May it be used as a substitute for leather?' Let him quietly go on with his work. The dye, the leather, will make their appearance in due time. Let him, I repeat, perform his task. Let him indulge in the pursuit of truth - of truth pure and simple - of truth not for the sake of Mauve - let him pursue truth for the sake of truth.

What Hofmann is speaking against is an overt emphasis on the functionalist approach to education.

More recently, in response to a question on why India is unable to produce a global management school, Jagdish N Sheth associated with the Goizueta Business School opined,

The main issue with Indian institutes is that they only concentrate on teaching and not research. We still have a system of knowledge dissemination and not knowledge creation. Our excellence lies in our admission process...

He may as well have been speaking for the educational structure that mars the entire country.

The problem of a functionalist approach is something the West deals with very well, by not merely responding to the need of the industry and by recognizing that the unconditioned consciousness does not recognize the divisions between the various streams of study that we have created for the convenience of organization and specialization. So the universities in the West have schools that study political thought and change, classics (including their mythological heritage in Greek and Latin), socio-economic change and its repercussions, etc. in addition to the professional streams. These schools are highly vibrant and respected centers of learning, have splendid infrastructure and generous funding, and are vied for by students. This competitive excellence in streams of non-professional study must come from a deep recognition of the fact that political philosophy and economic ingenuity play as important a role in the vision of a nation or civilization as technological progress. Indeed, studies that have immediate tangible value cannot be advanced without progress in the underlying 'pure' fields such as physics, economics, linguistics, etc. A healthy stance towards learning in all spheres is important if we are to protect the wholistic nature of education from decay.

Another issue that is related to the functional aspect of Indian education is the positive versus normative divide (terms of perspectives used mainly in economic study). A nation that has left the reins of rule and thought to outsiders for centuries cannot wake up all of a sudden and start asking stirring questions. So, as far as it concerns positive studies, the study of true and false, we are good at it. This might perhaps be the reason why Indians do so well in the sphere of sciences and why the IITs (despite their lack of extravagant infrastructure) are recognized the world over for their contribution in sciences and technology. However, when it comes to the normative questions, the questions of good versus bad and right versus wrong, we seem to get uncomfortable and squeamish and prefer to keep it beneath veneers. In a land which not only has rampant corruption, prejudice, and a general lack of awareness or questioning about ethics but also recognizes these as a part of life to be given no greater attention than the very act of breathing, it can be very difficult for a common next-door conditioned mind to comprehend the fallacy of acts such as propagating venality, not being passionate about one's work, paying "donations for a seat in an educational institute", prejudice against sexual minorities, etc. Such an attitude transforms itself into an educational failure in social sciences which rely heavily on the normative line of thought, because prejudice cripples the mind of any ability for independent, constructive thought.

The question of divisions between the various streams of study brings us to another important issue that is hardly ever considered in the Indian milieu. I have become aware of this flaw after having read of it in an unlikely but appropriate place, and have become increasingly observant to it cropping up in everyday questions pertinent to my education and of those around me. While it focuses much on literature, it is equally applicable to understanding the pitfalls of education in general. In the preface to The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing says:

It starts when the child is as young as five or six, when he arrives at school. It starts with marks, rewards, 'places', 'streams', stars - and still in many places, stripes. This horse-race mentality, the victor and loser way of thinking, leads to 'Writer X is, is not, a few paces ahead of Writer Y. Writer Y has fallen behind. In his last book, Writer Z has shown himself as better then Writer A.' From the very beginning, the child is trained to think in this way: always in terms of comparison, of success, and of failure. It is a weeding-out system: the weaker get discouraged and fall out; a system designed to produce a few winners who are always in competition with each other. It is my belief - though this is not the place to develop this - that the talents every child has, regardless of his official 'IQ', could stay with him through life, to enrich him and everybody else, if these talents were not regarded as commodities with a value in the success-stakes.

The other thing taught from the start is to distrust one's own judgement. Children are taught submission to authority, how to search for other people's opinions and decisions, and how to quote and comply.

As in the political sphere, the child is always taught that he is free, a democrat, with a free will and a free mind, lives in a free country, makes his own decisions. At the same time, he is a prisoner of the assumptions and dogmas of his time, which he does not question, because he has never been told they exist. By the time a young person has reached the age when he has to choose (we still take for granted that a choice is inevitable) between the arts and science, he often chooses the arts because he feels that here is humanity, freedom, choice. He does not know that he is already moulded by a system: he does not know that the choice itself is the result of a false dichotomy rooted in the heart of our culture. Those who do sense this, and who don't wish to subject themselves to further moulding by a system, tend to leave, in a half unconscious, instinctive attempt to find work where they won't be divided against themselves. With all our institutions, from the police force to academia, from medicine to politics, we give little attention to people who leave - that process of elimination that goes on all the time and which excludes, very early, those likely to be original and reforming, leaving those attracted to a thing because that is what they are already like. A young policeman leaves the Force saying he doesn't like what he has to do. A young teacher leaves teaching, her idealism snubbed. This social mechanism goes almost unnoticed - yet it is as powerful as any in keeping our institution rigid and oppressive.

These children who have spent years inside the training system become critics and reviewers, and cannot give what the author, the artist, so foolishly asks for - imaginative and original judgement. What they can do, and what they do very well, is to tell the writer how the book or play accords with current patterns of feeling and thinking - the climate of opinion. They are like litmus paper. They are wind guages - invaluable. They are the most sensitive of barometers of public opinion. You can see changes of mood and opinion here sooner than anywhere except in the political field - it is because these are people whose whole education has been just that - to look outside themselves for their opinions, to adapt themselves to authority figures, to 'received opinion' - a marvelously revealing phrase.

It may be that there is no other way of educating people. Possibly, but I don't believe that. In the meantime, it would be a help at least to describe things properly, to call things by their right names. Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of doctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show you how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others, will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself - educating your own judgement. Those that stay must remember, always and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.'

Lessing talks about the imaginary division between arts and science. In India, we seem to have kept the division but altered its banks. We have an unwritten but nevertheless quite rigid and oppressive hierarchy: science, commerce, arts. Mental ability (often construed as talent) dictates what one pursues, often with little or no justification in terms of talent, temperament, or inclination. However, most Indians concerned with science have some liking for the Arts and do dabble (sometimes quite successfully) in artistic activities they like. The same cannot be said for the people in arts dabbling in the Sciences, not because of lack of inclination or ability but because it is difficult to succeed in science without sustained training inputs. The bottomline is that the divisions between arts and science have been a lot more fuzzy than the ones between unseemly commerce and science/arts. Indeed, arts and sciences share topics such as logic and certain esoteric parts of philosophy; and attitudes are often found on the wrong sides of the divide - it is not uncommon to find scientists and technologists having a highly emotional, attached attitude to work, something identified easily in artists; likewise, it is not hard to find people associated with literature and philosophy utilize scientific methods and detached attitudes in analyzing the connections and repercussions of work in their domain. On the other hand, commerce is considered to be separate from science/arts. It is rare to find a person with a good degree of knowledge in both commerce and science/arts, unless the person belongs or has belonged to both sides.

In order to clearly understand the nature of graduate studies in CSE and management and the sort of career to be expected later, I recently met a few of my friends who have already handled such studies before. I was surprised (though I shouldn't have been) to learn that people invariably thought a dichotomy was staring me in the face, that a choice was inevitable. Now, quite a few areas of study in economics and finance can be understood easily by engineers who are usually trained in optimization; broadly speaking, economics and finance are essentially studies in optimization themselves. Surprisingly, a huge share of the managers you find in Indian B-schools are engineers who don't want to be engineers anymore, and seem to see management as a kind of escape route and not as an applicatory augmentation of their already acquired analytical skills. It surprised me to find that even people with a CSE background who had chosen to study management were consciously clueless that a lot of topics studied in management intersected with CSE, viz. financial engineering, decision sciences, operations and logistics, etc. Indeed, they believed that they had made a complete 'switch'. Also, there is very little inclination in an MBA student to do academic research, though I must blame this on the utilitarian nature of the curricula followed. On the other hand, the people who were pursuing graduate degrees in CSE and were involved in heavy-duty research seemed to think of the MBA as a completely different way of life (which it is) and were again clueless that any academic research happened in the sphere of management. I believe that CSE is perhaps the only engineering stream that generally intersects almost all other spheres of scientific study, and that it shares more than just a few subjects of interest with management. And yet, graduates of this stream with immense possibility, whether they pursued CSE or management, came to believe that they had made a choice between the two which Lessing calls "the result of a false dichotomy rooted in the heart of our culture."

The Lessing identified division between arts and science has been transformed in the Indian context into a commerce versus arts/science divide. And both are equally convenient, imaginary and ridiculous. For example, consider a painting, obviously a work of art. Yet its valuation and its tenability as an investment option is a question in commerce and its trends. Likewise, its preservation is a question that chemical scientists and practitioners must answer. Also, with a flower, you may write a poem about it, dissect it for its various morphological parts, or go sell it in the market. The various streams simply serve as perspectives to look at a single thing. In everyday life, it is extremely easy to observe, if one is aware and alert, as to how these seemingly different principal streams of study run into each other, feed off each other, and are dependent on each other. And how a perspective allows us to think of a thing without creating conflict, and is best used for this purpose alone and not to limit the horizons of thought. In my belief, a truly educated mind can change perspectives, can wear various hats, and in this must never be constrained by its wish or its dexterity in accommodating these perspectives, although ability may be a straitjacket, easily gotten rid of with some effort.

Since this is just a blogpost and not a formal essay, here's more from the highly interesting and educative preface to The Golden Notebook:

Meanwhile there is a country where...

Thirty or forty years ago, a critic made a private list of writers and poets which he, personally, considered made up what was invaluable in literature, dismissing all others. This list he defended lengthily in print, for The List instantly became a subject of much debate. Millions of words were written for and against - schools and sects, for and against, came into being. The argument, all these years later, still continues... no one finds this state of affairs sad or ridiculous...

Where there are critical books of immense complexity and learning, dealing, but often at second or third hand, with original work - novels, plays, stories. The people who write these books form a stratum in universities across the world - they are an international phenomenon, the top layer of literary academia. Their lives are spent in criticizing, and in criticizing each other's criticism. They at least regard this activity as more important than the original work. It is possible for literary students to spend more time reading criticism and criticism of criticism than they spend reading poetry, novels, biography, stories. A great many people regard this state of affairs as quite normal, and not sad and ridiculous...

When I recently read an essay about Antony and Cleopatra by a boy shortly to take A levels. It was full of originality and excitement about the play, the feeling that any real teaching about literature aims to produce. The essay was returned by the teacher like this: I cannot mark this essay, you haven't quoted from the authorities. Few teachers would regard this as sad and ridiculous...

Where people who consider themselves educated, and indeed as superior to and more refined than ordinary non-reading people, will come up to a writer and congratulate him or her on getting a good review somewhere - but will not consider it necessary to read the book in question, or ever to think that what they are interested in is success...

Where when a book comes out on a certain subject, let's say star-gazing, instantly a dozen colleges, societies, television programmes write to the author asking him to come and speak about star-gazing. The last thing it occurs to them to do is to read the book. This behaviour is considered quite normal, and not ridiculous at all...

Where a young man or woman, reviewer or critic, who has not read more of a writer's work than the book in front of him, will write patronizingly, or as if rather bored with the whole business, or as if considering how many marks to give an essay, about the writer in question - who might have written fifteen books, and have been writing for twenty or thirty years - giving the said writer instruction on what to write next, and how. No one thinks this is absurd, certainly not the young person, critic or reviewer, who has been taught to patronize and itemize everyone for years, from Shakespeare downwards.

Where a Professor of Archaeology can write of a South American tribe which has advanced knowledge of plants, and of medicine and of psychological methods: 'The astonishing thing is that these people have no written language...' And no one thinks him absurd.

Where, on the occasion of a centenary of Shelley, in the same week and in three different literary periodicals, three young men, of identical education, from our identical universities, can write critical pieces about Shelley, damning him with the faintest possible praise, and in identically the same tone, as if they were doing Shelley a great favour to mention him at all - and no one seems to think that such a thing can indicate that there is something seriously wrong with our literary system.

A Post About Plots And Stuff

2009-05-17T20:20:00.003+05:30

TSA Writing Tips - Twenty Basic Plots - Copyright 2002 TSA

IDEAS, PLOTS & USING THE PREMISE SHEETS

After you come up with your own system for generating ideas, the next step is to put them in some recognizable story form (the basic plot idea), build your central conflict (the story premise sheet), then build your character and underlying themes (the thematic premise sheet).

#1 QUEST - the plot involves the Protagonist's search for a person, place or thing, tangible or intangible (but must be quantifiable, so think of this as a noun; i.e., immortality).

#2 ADVENTURE - this plot involves the Protagonist going in search of their fortune, and since fortune is never found at home, the Protagonist goes to search for it somewhere over the rainbow.

#3 PURSUIT - this plot literally involves hide-and-seek, one person chasing another.

#4 RESCUE - this plot involves the Protagonist searching for someone or something, usually consisting of three main characters - the Protagonist, the Victim & the Antagonist.

#5 ESCAPE - plot involves a Protagonist confined against their will who wants to escape (does not include some one trying to escape their personal demons).

#6 REVENGE - retaliation by Protagonist or Antagonist against the other for real or imagined injury.

#7 THE RIDDLE - plot involves the Protagonist's search for clues to find the hidden meaning of something in question that is deliberately enigmatic or ambiguous.

#8 RIVALRY - plot involves Protagonist competing for same object or goal as another person (their rival).

#9 UNDERDOG - plot involves a Protagonist competing for an object or goal that is at a great disadvantage and is faced with overwhelming odds.

#10 TEMPTATION - plot involves a Protagonist that for one reason or another is induced or persuaded to do something that is unwise, wrong or immoral.

#11 METAMORPHOSIS - this plot involves the physical characteristics of the Protagonist actually changing from one form to another (reflecting their inner psychological identity).

#12 TRANSFORMATION - plot involves the process of change in the Protagonist as they journey through a stage of life that moves them from one significant character state to another.

#13 MATURATION - plot involves the Protagonist facing a problem that is part of growing up, and from dealing with it, emerging into a state of adulthood (going from innocence to experience).

#14 LOVE - plot involves the Protagonist overcoming the obstacles to love that keeps them from consummating (engaging in) true love.

#15 FORBIDDEN LOVE - plot involves Protagonist(s) overcoming obstacles created by social mores and taboos to consummate their relationship (and sometimes finding it at too high a price to live with).

#16 SACRIFICE - plot involves the Protagonist taking action(s) that is motivated by a higher purpose (concept) such as love, honor, charity or for the sake of humanity.

#17 DISCOVERY - plot that is the most character-centered of all, involves the Protagonist having to overcome an upheavel(s) in their life, and thereby discovering something important (and buried) within them a better understanding of life (i.e., better appreciation of their life, a clearer purpose in their life, etc.)

#18 WRETCHED EXCESS - plot involves a Protagonist who, either by choice or by accident, pushes the limits of acceptable behavior to the extreme and is forced to deal with the consequences (generally deals with the psychological decline of the character).

#19 ASCENSION - rags-to-riches plot deals with the rise (success) of Protagonist due to a dominating character trait that helps them to succeed.

#20 DECISION - riches-to-rags plot deals with the fall (destruction) of Protagonist due to dominating character trait that eventually destroys their success.

(Note: Sometimes #19 & #20 are combined into rags-to-riches-to-rags (or vice versa) of a Protagonist who does (or doesn't) learn to deal with their dominating character trait.)

Of Tagore, Kafka, Lessing, Dasgupta, Wodehouse, Ray and Iyer

2009-05-08T20:59:00.007+05:30

Another year has passed by... Today is Tagore's birthday. Cheers to a blessed day!

In the past few months, cut off for most part from the Internet, I've been reading voraciously, devouring all sorts of books that I could lay my hands on. I'm in the habit of reading many books simultaneously. During this period, the thought of this humble blog crossed my mind only sporadically and fleetingly, as did the thought of reviewing all the books I was reading. Time to make amends...

I've in my possession The Complete Novels - Kafka, which I'm currently reading. If we all live in a Kafka book, then my world is quite complete. ;-) The most surreal turn of events populate this man's writing, and though he seems fatalistic, I feel there's much more to it than that. He seems to write naturally, more naturally than even Chekhov (though comparisons are uncalled for). And he should be required reading...

I'm currently also wading through Lessing's The Golden Notebook, a book that might take me my longest time to finish a book. Her scholarship, instinct and almost insistent prose peels away many layers to expose the truth of the narrative. The structure of the novel is unique amongst all that I've read, and she has so many themes that it is quite a task reading the intensely analytical narrative. I was at one time thinking of giving up finishing the book. However, the vignettes the book conjures and passes to the reader are so unique that I stayed the course. Given the highly analytical treatment, I was surprised to have myself thinking of The Golden Notebook as a intensely visual novel. But I think that readers who've known the book for sometime will agree with me. To sum it up, a book one can turn to again and again and come away with something different each time.

I'm whizzing past Dasgupta's Tokyo Cancelled, and perhaps the best thing I can say about the book is that at one point, I almost forgot that it was Dasgupta and blessed Rushdie for turning out such a fine book. However, I must say that Indian literature (what little I know of it) seems to be full with story-telling. The cult of magical realism has become so hackneyed that I was quick to place Tokyo Cancelled in that realm. In spite of all the innovation, the works make one think of a practiced flair. There is hardly any trespassing of boundaries, any major flouting of rules, ruffling of feathers that may be remebered in the long run - something that one almost expects of say Lessing or Murakami. And the philosophical streak of novel writing is hardly to be seen in Indian English literature, the quality that makes one set down a book to do some clear thinking to make meaning out of what the writer is trying to say and to identify the various themes laid out in the matter of a fictional narrative. Our literature seems to be made more for downright consumption rather than any philosophical rumination.

I've read two Wodehouses in the recent past - Big Money and Ring For Jeeves. And what can I say, that man blows me over! Capital!!!

I also have in my possession The Complete Feluda Stories of Satyajit Ray, arranged in two volumes in chronological order. The mysteries make for wonderful light reading, and I wonder why Feluda is not as popular in India as Sherlo9ck Holmes...

Finally, I must highly recommend Pallavi Iyer's Smoke and Mirrors, non-fiction writings from her stay in China. Naipaul is my ultimate man for non-fiction, and though Iyer is not as passionately inquisitive as Naipaul, she writes naturally and truthfully and throws up many gems. The book taught me many things about China, but most importantly the extent of my ignorance and prejudice about China. I respect China much more now!

That's it for the time being. Au Revoir!

The Abyssinian Boy - Onyeka Nwelue

2008-12-11T14:56:00.006+05:30

My friend Onyeka Nwelue has had a wonderful thing happen to him. Read the following press release to find out:-

Onyeka Nwelue

DADA Books, an imprint of Design and Dream Arts Agency, have signed a book deal with 20 year-old University of Nigeria sophomore, Onyeka Nwelue, to publish his novel, The Abyssinian Boy by December.

Onyeka Nwelue was born in Nigeria in 1988. After graduating from High School at 17, he travelled to South Asia, particularly to India, where he wrote the first draft of his novel in three months. He has been published in the Guardian, The Sun, Eclectica, Nigeria Village Square, Kafla InterContinental and Wild Goose Poetry Review. He has received a grant from the Institute for Research on African Women, Children and Culture (IRAWCC) and is currently working on his second novel.

Set in India and Nigeria (and scattered locations of the world), The Abyssinian Boy is about a family whose nine year-old child gets haunted by an albino dwarf ghost.

Ayodele Arigbabu, publisher of DADA Books, refusing to comment on the terms of the deal, rather said: ‘The Abyssinian Boy lays bare the many paradoxes of culture clash with thought provoking and often amusing ironies’. Chika Unigwe, Nigerian-Belgian author of The Phoenix describes it as ‘an ambitious novel’.

DADA Books was established earlier this year and has already published Jumoke Verissimo’s I am Memory.

Sources close to the publishers say the author has been paid an advance of N 2.5 million.

For enquiries, contact: DADA Books, 1^st Floor, 95 Bode Thomas Street, Surulere, Lagos; Tel: +234-01-7451990. E.mail: dreamarts.designagency@gmail.com

Eureka! '08 Mentors' Meet - SJMSOM, IIT Bombay - Anand Lunia

2008-12-07T16:52:00.008+05:30

As finalists in Eureka!'08, the biggest business plan competition in Asia, me and my friend got to attend two immensely outstanding workshops on the business of business. Both of them were conducted at the Shailesh J. Mehta School Of Management, IIT Bombay.

The first was by Mr. Anand Lunia, Executive Director and CFO of Seedfund. A lanky guy, he became a VC after growing and selling many businesses of his own. One of his businesses was sold at 60 million dollars and I'm sure many of the participants hoped (prayed?) that they may have such luck with their startup.

Anand explained the Venture Capital business building up the idea of VC funding, its hows and whys from scratch. Right from Premoney, Postmoney to the intricacies of valuation and dealing with a VC, he covered it all.

Here are some notes from his lecture that might interest a person working on a business plan/startup:-

The VC fund is usually expected to give 3x returns. So pervasive is the 80-20 rule that it finds its way here too. Out of every ten ventures funded with VC capital, only two succeed. Since these successes must compensate for the failures of the remaining part of the investment, they are expected to have an ROI of 10x. Since all ideas/teams invested in seem exceptionally great (that is why the investment gets done), here is no way of knowing at the time of investment which of the lot is going to succeed. Hence the VC's have to maintain exceptionally high hopes from every venture, pray for the success of each, and plan for preventing the failure of any of the investments.
The three main criteria for assessing a business plan are team, market and product in that order.
Any business plan needs to be backed up by a strong team. The various factors that are used while judging a team are academic background, professional track record and its relevance to the plan at hand, the motivation of the team as demonstrated by the groundwork already done for the success of the plan, etc. Often the team factor outweighs the other considerations when VC's are considering a plan. Anand said that at Seedfund, a business plan is evaluated by five independent VC's. Even if the plan is rated B by some VC, the team must get a rating of A by all the VC's. This is because a good team can make more out of a good plan than a mediocre team out of a great plan.
The market for your idea has to be big. It should be usually atleast around a hundred crores or more for a VC to look into it. Less than that, it is better to go in for angel investors, loand from banks, relatives, etc.
If the product rests on confidentiality of the idea, then the claims to IPR better be good. But it is not necessary that you need to have a great idea to make a difference. It is the execution of the idea that makes an idea a million-dollar proposition. So take a good idea (you can pick somebody's brains; there is no copyright on ideas!) and get down to making it work better than your competitors.
Often a business plan will state that the team is working on so niche a project that it does not have competition at all. This spells bad news for the plan as the VC's figure out that a niche with no competitors will mostly have a very small market size. This can greatly dissuade VC's from investing in the plan.
Every once in a while, an idea will come along that will bank upon its niche as its USP. For example, Google which was turned down by more than 10 investors when it applied for seeding. But more often than not, VC's expect their investments to have a predictable way of capitalizing on an untapped market. While this spells problems for plans which seek to actualize niche ideas, it can actually help the planners by pitting them against critical VC's whose advice can help in polishing the plan so that the market traction is better once the idea is put into practice.
It is important to actually collect feedback on your customer sales presentation and/or conduct market surveys in order to test if there exists a need for the product/service you're trying to sell. This can often help in determining other factors that may be of importance and may even change the USP of what you are trying to sell.
The valuation of a company is directly proportional to the size of the market it is trying to capture.
It is the relevance of your academic/professional knowledge and experience that counts while your plan is being considered for valuation by a VC. There is nothing as deluding as self-valuation on the basis of academic/professional pedigree.

That's more or less the gist of the lecture. There was also a minor session on the documentation involved while raising money for a venture and negotiating with a VC. It involved the term sheet, VC rights, entrepreneur rights, shareholders' agreements, share purchase agreements, due diligence, and questions of the governing board and vetoes.

Though I've yet to grasp a lot about the details of valuation and negotiation, Anand's lecture was immensely helpful to me and the other participants as an introduction to valuing our ideas, polishing our business plans, and avoiding common pitfalls while pitching to a VC.

Let's Talk Haiku!

2008-11-30T22:37:00.013+05:30

There's good news for me. And haiku for you. Actually, there was good news... A couple of months ago, I submitted some haiku to World Haiku Review. I got a good feedback from them - a nice mail which explained what I was doing wrong and where I could improve. If you've been around for some time in this business of sending off things on spec, you know how difficult it is to come by a thing like that. Then I all but forgot about it and hence had the pleasant surprise of finding my haiku in that magazine a few days ago. It's been over a month since they've out. Without further ado...

World Haiku Review, Volume 6, Issue 4, October 2008
Shintai (New Style) Haiku

THE BEST TEN

FIRST PLACE

in shadow

the moth stills its wings

leaving dreams to fly

Marie Shimane

SECOND PLACE

watercolour–

after lunch he adds

the stork

John Bird

THIRD PLACE

A fallen gulmohur bud:

An incomplete story but

A complete poem.

Abhinav Maurya

SEVEN HONOURABLE MENTIONS

(In no particular order)

night alleyway...

my floodlight shadow

breaks into two

zinovy Vayman

even his trees

stay inside the fence

unseen neighbour

Ann K. Schwader

(A favorite!!!)

working lunch

haiku scribbled

on my napkin

Carmel Lively Westerman

each day continues

a journey of loneliness

crows screech overhead

Marie Shimane

dawn childbirth

when the door opens

a cock crows

Elizabeth Howard

a week of rain

new appreciation for

the nuance of gray

Claudia Coutu Radmore

reprinting the thesis

leaving the mistakes

Owen Bullock

OTHER HAIKU OF MERIT

(Zatsu-ei in no particular order)

year's end . . .

the bedding piled up

in the motel

Bruce Ross

vinegar bath

mother's diamond ring

regains its sparkle

Peggy Heinrich

noon church bell ...

how her dress

traces her

Tyrone McDonald

on grass she shone

under the vast sky-

bare and alone

Aju Mukhopadhyay

morn breeze

the trees filter light

and bird songs

john tiong chunghoo

posh café

the first bite of the plum cake

sends me back home

Rafal Zabratynski

a lady's voice

"your poor mother's grave," she says

needs your attention

Howard Lee Kilby

World Haiku Review, Volume 6, Issue 4, October 2008
Vanguard Haiku

THE BEST TEN

FIRST PLACE

sunny day -

why not get

the divorce papers?

Owen Bullock

(Ahhh!!!)

SECOND PLACE

cabinetmaker

the mortice joints

on his coffin

John Bird

THIRD PLACE

adoption center

she colors her mom black

her dad no face

Victor P. Gendrano

SEVEN HONOURABLE MENTIONS

(In no particular order)

In the morning,

The suit, the tie, the watch…

At night, only you!

Abhinav Maurya

Season of mellow

Yellow fruit; ripeness is all

Too tired to die

Frank Corcoran

Gathering firewood

One life giving up their soul

For another's warmth

Kristin Reynolds

relationship's end:

he calls the baby

his fuck trophy

Richard Stevenson

Swords to bombs:

At war with one another,

At war with ourselves

Abhinav Maurya

a tiny twig trembles

in the blast of wind

first marital quarrel

Victor P. Gendrano

I told him, "Good boy."

His curled tail wagged one last time.

The vet said, "He's gone."

Elizabeth Ewing

OTHER HAIKU OF MERIT

(Zatsu-ei)

depression;

winds thrash the trees,

no rains- whatever it is!

Aju Mukhopadhyay

Trepidation spills

From your every orifice

Revelation lost

Kristin Reynolds

All haiku are under copyrights of their original authors.

Now That There's Time To Read And Introspect

2008-11-30T11:25:00.007+05:30

Received via email from Peter Griffin:-

Suketu Mehta in NYT - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/opinion/29mehta.html

Dilip D'souza in the Washinton Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802247.html

Naresh Fernandes in The New Republic - http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=4ef869a4-0c91-4a83-8d3e-2b7ca1501996 See also http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=8e4fc4e9-5298-4f0c-bf66-980c253c43e0 - his piece on Jews in Bombay.

And these pieces, on their blogs, by Amit Varma, Sonia Faleiro and Rahul Bhatia.

And these by Prem Panicker: http://www.prempanicker.com/index.php?/site/respiro_ergo_sum/ & http://www.prempanicker.com/index.php?/site/an_officer_and_gentleman_and_a_moron/ & http://www.prempanicker.com/index.php?/site/end_game/ (the latter two link to some excellent stuff as well)

And this, by Ingrid Srinath - http://citizensforpeace.in/blog/2008/11/29/this-is-not-indias-911 (Read also Priyanka Joseph's comment to that post)

Winner Of The First Australia-Asia Literary Award

2008-11-24T23:45:00.003+05:30

"There's a huge change coming very fast and this prize is giving a glimpse of that future." Nury Vittachi, judge and founding board member of the Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership.

DAVID MALOUF has won the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Award for his short story collection The Complete Stories.

The AU$110,000 award, which was created by the former Labor government in Western Australia, is worth AU$10,000 more than the next richest, the Prime Minister's Literary Award, and is given for fiction by writers resident in, or outside Australia, writing primarily about Australia or Asia.

Malouf was "very pleased to be the first recipient". He welcomed the award, and praised it as unique among state literary prizes.

"There is certainly no other literary prize where Australia is the initiator which takes in Asia like this does, so it's a very good thing that we're looking outwards rather than inwards as we tend to do" he said.

The Complete Stories won from a very strong shortlist, including The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize), The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser (longlisted for the Booker), Blood Kin by Ceridwen Dovey, and Orpheus Lost by Janette Turner Hospital.

The longlist, culled from 111 entries, also had plenty of dazzle, including the Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee (Diary Of A Bad Year), Haruki Murakami (After Dark), Rodney Hall (Love Without Hope) and Alex Miller (Landscape Of Farewell).

"It's a wonderful piece of writing, a combination of decades of work, and it captures the human condition in such a deep and intense way," said Nury Vittachi, a member of the judging panel, along with the Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie, and the Australian critic Peter Craven. Vittachi is also a founding board member of the Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership.

"His characters are very ordinary people and he captures the intense joys and sadness of ordinary life."

Vittachi agreed the decision to award the prize to a book of short stories was unusual.

"It might usually go to a novel. But there's an ancient story form called a bracelet, where you have a sequence of stand-alone stories which when read together have as much power as a single, united novel. We thought this book worked as just such a bracelet."

Vittachi sees the award as a means to divine the region's literary future.

"This award is special as it has a focus on a particular region, a region where there are 4 billion people," Vittachi said.

"The future of our cultural entertainment will be here. We're looking for a new Asia-Pacific flavour, as that is a good pointer to what the new literature will be. There's a huge change coming very fast and this prize is giving a glimpse of that future."

Malouf said he hoped "booksellers, publishers and the media get behind the prize in the way they do for the Miles Franklin Award".

Australia-Asia Literary Award Shortlist

Michelle DE KRETSER The Lost Dog Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Mohsin HAMID The Reluctant Fundamentalist Publisher: Penguin
David MALOUF The Complete Stories Publisher: Random House
Ceridwen DOVEY Blood Kin Publisher: Atlantic Books
Janette TURNER HOSPITAL Orpheus Lost Publisher: HarperCollins

Australia-Asia Literary Award Longlist

J.M. COETZEE Diary of a Bad Year Publisher: Random House Group Ltd
Matthew CONDON The Trout Opera Publisher: Random House (Vintage)
Michelle DE KRETSER The Lost Dog Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Ceridwen DOVEY Blood Kin Publisher: Atlantic Books
Rodney HALL Love without Hope Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Mohsin HAMID The Reluctant Fundamentalist Publisher: Penguin
Mireille JUCHAU Burning In Giramondo Publishing
David MALOUF The Complete Stories Publisher: Random House
Alex MILLER Landscape of Farewell Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Haruki MURAKAMI After Dark Translator: Jay Rubin Publisher: Random House Group
Indra SINHA Animal’s People Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
Janette TURNER HOSPITAL Orpheus Lost Publisher: HarperCollins

-from The Sydney Morning Herald, November 22, 2008.

Nadine Gordimer's Coming To Bombay!!!

2008-11-06T21:40:00.006+05:30

We've a chance to witness a book reading by Nadine Gordimer in Bombay. Nadine Gordimer has won the Nobel for literature, the Booker, James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the best book from Africa. The details are reproduced below. Thanks to Peter Griffin of Caferati for the tip.

Ministry of External Affairs (Public Diplomacy Division),
Sahitya Akademi & The Asiatic Society of Mumbai

cordially invite you to a book reading
by
Dr. Nadine Gordimer distinguished South African writer and Nobel laureate
on
Sunday, 9 November 2008
At 10.30 a.m.

Venue: The Durbar Hall, The Asiatic Society of Mumbai Town Hall,
Shahid Bhagat Singh Marg, Fort, Mumbai - 400 023.

Judith Hall Presents A Poem By Reetika Vazirani

2008-11-02T23:22:00.007+05:30

Ghalib Speaks of His Poet Friends:-

All my life I’ve been amending their verses.
Now that I’m ill they write,
“You have not replied to my letter.” As if I
could make their couplets rhyme,
or rhyme slightly better.
Do they think I should live only
to correct their verses!
Shah Alam Sahib and Tufta, they’re peevish
to the end: they think my ill health
is a poetic exaggeration.

Without me they can versify or not versify;
it’s not for me to prod grown men
at the eleventh hour.
If I’ve lost my tact, I’ll offend them,
but all my life glad comments on loose verse
offended me. Now in pleasing myself,
I’ve lost the pleasure. But hell with these grudges
of the day, these small sentiments.
Let the newspapers print that I’m near death.
I’m not up to correcting the ghazals of a Tufta.

– Reetika Vazirani (1962-2003)
from The Antioch Review, Winter 1996, v. 54, no. 1

Note by Judith Hall

In 1995, I entered service as poetry editor of The Antioch Review. Much to my relief, my predecessor, David St. John, had already accepted poems for issues well into 1996. Vazirani’s is one of his I claim.

Her “Ghalib” is surely the 19th century poet who wrote in Urdu under that name. “Ghazal”, an intricate Arabic form, is probably familiar to BAP readers; the word also means, according to Agha Shahid Ali, “the cry of the gazelle when it is cornered in a hunt and knows it will die.” Form follows word here, and while a romantic editor would link this image to this poet. I will not. The complaints and witty tittle-tattle of Vazirani's Ghalib charm and need no justification.

For the next several weeks, I will be your Sunday editor, succeeding the estimable Bruce Covey in this role. I hope you will enjoy the Antioch poems coming your way.

Song Of The Little Road

2008-11-01T14:38:00.010+05:30

A blogpost after a very long time. All things, one at a time.

I recently fished out page 11 of DNA Sunday dated August 10, 2008 that I'd preserved for the purpose of reference. Here's quoting from the article Mostly Pointless, Incessant Barking by G Sampath:

There is a famous New Yorker cartoon on blogging. It shows two dogs in conversation. One of them is telling the other, "I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking." It would appear that a sizeable number of the world's bloggers are following the lead of this New Yorker dog. According to a Gartner estimate, by mid-2007, about 200 million people were 'ex-bloggers'. Make no mistake, the landscape of the World Wide Web is littered with the corpses of dead blogs. [..]

Before you can make a transition from pointless, incessant barking to a level of communication that gets you some returns in terms of either attention or money. But until that happens, you can't help wondering at some point if you aren't barking up the wrong tree. And that, by the way, is all it takes to kill a blog.

I do not agree with the above opinion for the most part. I believe that blogs have immense use, potential, and capacity for change. In the small time for which I've been acquainted with blogosphere (as compared to stalwarts like Peter Griffin), I've seen blogs defy all set limits of expression - most of these were blogs on writing, but there were also blogs on current affairs, technology, medecine, cinema, music, prostitution, sex and sexual deviousness, drug addiction, travel, cuisine, politics, blogs in remembrance of someone, blogs acting as public dairies, as professional journals, blogs with sponsored content, etcetera. I think blogs are a great thing to have happened to us and for these reasons, I would not want my blog to be 'dead'.

However, it's very restricting for me to keep this blog thematic and yet blog regularly. Writing is such an intensive and time-consuming activity (what with all the planning and research and plotting and dishing it out); blogs on the other hand need not be planned, need not have their grammar right (though it helps). All that a blogger needs to do is wear his heart on his sleeve. I'm not a professional blogger and I blog for the fun and joy of blogging. Hence, I've decided to nor restrict myself to reviews and literature but to blog about anything I care about. That way, I would have a lot more fun blogging and the blog would not 'die' out.

If I'm going to change the focus of the blog altogether, the earlier name .::The Reluctant Writer::. doesn't stick. So I have thought of renaming it to .::Song Of The Little Road::. 'Why?' you say. Because I'm in love with punctuation marks, but more importantly because Song Of The Little Road is the English name of Pather Panchali (a legendary movie by Satyajit Ray, the granddaddy of Indian cinema), the one movie that has singularly defined and redefined my notions of art in general and cinema in particular. Immensely delicate, poignant and humanistic, to the point of being Tagoresque. BTW, I also thought of The Life And Times Of A (A for Abhinav, just in case) and Midnight's Child (because I was born on the brink of midnight) but I think that Song Of The Little Road means much more to me than the others. So there you go... this blog is my Song Of The Little Road.

I've decided to take the plunge and go for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Actually, it should be InNoWriMo (International Novel Writing Month), and the organizers agree. But InNoWriMo is simply not as much pronouncing as NaNoWriMo, so there you go. It seems very unlikely that a person of my temperament should even think of attempting the herculean feat, let alone of finishing it. And mind you, I'm under no illusions about my inability to go all the way. But as Chandler from Friends puts it, you never know! And besides, I could do with some discipline to get started on a novel, the module of my creative writing course that I've putting on the backburner for months. So if you participating in NaNoWriMo, let me know and perhaps we can egg each other on towards that distant finish line as writing buddies.

Facebook seems to gel well with me for SN (even though apparently it doesn't for many people I know). I've been on it for about a year and unless Zuckerberg thinks of screwing up the design and layout in a irredeemably unlikeable manner (of which he showed us a rather unpopular trailer recently), I think I'm going to stick to Facebook for a long time. It's extremely user-friendly, sleek, and intuitive - no frills - SN at its best. In short, it's cool. I hate that amorphous, imprecise word and I must love Facebook a great deal to use it.

Godel's Theorem

2008-10-29T00:46:00.004+05:30

An absolutely fantastic essay found here:

John von Neumann, the legendary mathematician who mastered calculus by the age of eight, who devised the familiar set-theoretic definition of the ordinal numbers at twenty, whose powers of calculation surpassed those of at least one early electronic computer, and who was described by Polya as "the only student I was ever afraid of", had the following to say regarding a certain episode in mathematical history:

This happened in our lifetime, and I know myself how humiliatingly easily my own values regarding the absolute mathematical truth changed during this episode, and how they changed three times in succession!

The cause of such awe was a short paper published in 1931 by the 25-year-old logician Kurt Godel, entitled Uber formal unentscheidbare Satze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme ("On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems"). The revolutionary (and, to von Neumann and many others, disturbing) implication of the results therein was that any logical system comprehensive enough to describe elementary arithmetic necessarily contains propositions which can neither be proven nor disproven. Moreover, Godel proved that the internal consistency of such a system can never be proven except by employing reasoning which is not expressible within the system itself.

Background

To better understand the impact which Godel's findings must have had on his peers, we should first describe the mathematical climate of the time.

In the nineteenth century it had been discovered, through the work of Riemann, Lobachevsky and others, that coherent models of geometry could be constructed in which Euclid's parallel postulate (that, given a line L and a point P in the plane, exactly one line exists which contains P and is parallel to L) did not hold. This, in itself, was a shock to many mathematicians: for millenia it had been assumed that Euclid's description of geometry, founded as it was on a "self-evident" and minimal set of axioms, was one of the firmest, most trustworthy branches of mathematical knowledge. The existence of non-Euclidean geometries not only challenged mathematicians' geometrical intuition, but also the Platonist view that mathematics consisted of discoveries about eternal, pure forms whose existence was objective and unquestionable. More "monstrosities" such as continuous functions which were nowhere differentiable soon appeared, further fueling the general loss of faith in geometry.

Attempts to re-establish the comfortable certainty of the past, by turning from geometry to set theory as the new foundation of mathematics, also ran aground. Set theory, when pushed too hard, soon yielded such abominations as Russell's "set of all sets which do not include themselves". It proved difficult to construct a theory of sets which outruled such objects without sacrificing one's principles in the process. Logicism, as espoused by Frege, Dedekind and Russell, gave birth to structures so complicated and unwieldy that the stated intention to formalize the intuitive laws of reasoning was obscured. Constructivism, which rejected even the law of trichotomy (that every real number is either greater than, equal to, or less than zero) was deservedly perceived as fanatical.

To sidestep the embarrassing possibility that multiple, equally defensible versions of mathematical truth might exist, mathematicians soon claimed to have never been searching for truth in the first place. The formalists, led by Hilbert, redefined mathematics as consisting of allegedly meaningless symbols which were not "about" anything in particular. The mathematician was recast as a practitioner who merely manipulated these empty signs, attempting to derive theorems (sentences consisting of the aforementioned meaning-free symbols) from axioms without concerning himself with the "truth" of his findings.

Hilbert hoped thus to outmanoeuvre intuition, and, more importantly, to make possible a proof of the consistency of mathematics. The logicists before him had already laid the foundation by developing a formal language in which mathematical statements could be expressed, along with symbolic transformation rules representing steps which could legally be followed in the progression from the beginning to the end of a valid proof. (The climactic, exhaustive chronicle of this endeavour is Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica, page 362 of which finally yields the demonstration that 1 + 1 = 2.) With this framework in place, it should (Hilbert thought) be possible to study the combinatorial properties of the set of all sentences which could legally be derived from the system's axioms, and to prove that no two of them were logical opposites. This would obviously be an assurance that mathematics (or at least the portion modelled by this formal system) was free from internal contradiction: that is, that the axioms could not be used to prove both a theorem and its negation.

As well as proving the impossibility of internal contradiction, it was hoped that the set of "true" sentences (those which could be constructed by applying legal transformations to the axioms) could be proved complete in the sense that, given a sentence, one could be assured that either this sentence or its negation was a member of the set of true sentences. A formal system with this property is said to exhibit "decidability", since one need never be unsure of the truth of a given sentence.

Godel's theorem

Hilbert's dreams of reformulating classical mathematics as a formal axiomatic system equipped with absolute proofs of consistency and completeness were dealt a cruel blow by Godel's findings in 1931.

In his famous paper, Godel proved that it was impossible to find a metamathematical proof of such a system's consistency without employing rules of inference inexpressible within the formal system under consideration. (More precisely, Godel proved his results of any axiomatic system comprehensive enough to contain the whole of arithmetic. Henceforth, when the term "formal system" is used, it should be assumed that we are speaking of a system satisfying the aforementioned requirement. Less powerful systems, such as arithmetic equipped with addition alone or multiplication alone, can in fact be proved decidable and complete, as was shown by Presburger and Skolem in 1930.)

Godel's other main conclusion was that any such formal system is incomplete, and hence that "truth" within the system is undecidable. Specifically, he showed that it possible to construct a sentence such that neither the constructed sentence nor its negation is provable within the system. What is more, even if one were to arbitrarily decide that such a sentence was true and should therefore be added to the system's axioms, there would still exist other equally undecidable sentences within this new system; and no matter how far this process of augmentation is taken, there will always be further truths which elude proof.

Godel Numbering

The proofs of Godel's results hinge on the fact that the set of formulas expressible within a symbolic system is countable, and hence each formula may be mapped to a natural number. Therefore, metamathematical statements about these sentences may be construed as statements about natural numbers: meaning that these metamathematical statements are expressible in the system itself. As we will see, this power of the system to codify statements about itself turns out to be an Achille's heel of sorts, allowing Godel's ingenious construction of an undecidable sentence.

Godel considered a formal system containing only seven constant symbols: the left and right parentheses, as well as signs representing "not", "or", "for all", "zero", and "the successor of" (an operator which adds one to an integer, and can therefore be used to express all natural numbers via its repeated application to "zero"). Recall that Godel's aim was to assign a unique integer (usually called the "Godel number") to each sentence expressible within this system; to begin with, the constant symbols described above were allocated distinct natural numbers. Similarly, other primitive signs (such as letters representing sentential variables) are each assigned integers. Since the number of variables which might be needed in a sentence is potentially infinite, Godel was compelled to employ some simple number theory to avoid overlap between the integers associated with different types of variables. As such, a certain class of variables was assigned prime Godel numbers, while another class was allocated from the set of squares of primes, and so on.

A similar trick was used by Godel to calculate a unique integer associated with each sentence. A sentence is just a string of primitive symbols, each of which already has a natural number assigned to it. Obviously, a simple addition of the Godel numbers of symbols in the sentence is inadequate, since it does not guarantee uniqueness over the set of all sentences. Similarly, a weighted sum is out of the question since we do not have an upper bound on the Godel numbers of primitive symbols. (If such a bound existed, say N, then we could simply multiply successive symbols by 1, N+1, (N+1)², etc., to obtain a unique Godel number for the sentence.) Instead, the Godel number of a sentence containing n symbols with respective Godel numbers G₁,...,G_n is defined as the product p₁^G₁*^...*p_n^G_n where p_i denotes the ith prime number. This representation allows us to unambiguously (as guaranteed by the fundamental theorem of arithmetic) retrieve a sentence from its Godel number via factorisation. Similarly, a sequence of sentences may be assigned a single Godel number by multiplying successive prime powers, the exponents being the Godel numbers of successive sentences in the sequence.

Outline Of Godel's Proof

Since every symbol, sentence, and sequence of sentences in the formal system has now been assigned a Godel number, and since the system under discussion is capable of expressing statements about natural numbers, we now have a way of expressing metamathematical statements in the language of the system. For example, the claim that one sentence implies another can be interpreted as asserting a certain numeric relation between the Godel numbers of the two sentences. This relation will obviously be very complex, since it will need to express, in the domain of Godel numbers, all possible legal transformations which may be applied to a sentence in the system. However, since in the end it is merely a statement about integers, it is certainly expressible in the language of the system itself. Similarly, a yet more complex relation between natural numbers m and n exists which expresses the claim "The sequence of sentences with Godel number m is a proof for the sentence with Godel number n".

To prove that an undecidable sentence existed, Godel needed to find a formula G which, somewhat like Epimenides (the Cretan who claimed "All Cretans are liars"), expressed the assertion that no proof of G exists. More precisely, this claim could be expressed in the language of the system as

There does not exist a natural number m such that m is the Godel number of a sequence of sentences forming a proof for the sentence with Godel number g.

where g is actually the Godel number of the sentence just quoted. The sentence can therefore be construed as making a claim about itself, namely that it is unprovable.

A little thought should show that constructing such a sentence is somewhat difficult. To calculate the Godel number of the above sentence, one follows the process described above of splitting it into primitive symbols, whose Godel numbers are encoded as exponents of successive primes. However, the result of this calculation, g, appears in the sentence itself, and therefore affects the calculation! It would appear at first that we need to be "lucky" by stumbling upon a number g with the property that, when substituted literally into this sentence, brings about the coincidence that the Godel number of the resultant sentence is also g.

Luck, of course, plays no part. Godel conceived of a complex but elegant construction which, through a process of iteration, shows how to find such a number in a finite number of steps. The details of this process, while readily understandable, are somewhat tedious and will not be described here. The end result is the important point: for a very general class of formal sysems, we have an explicit method for constructing a sentence, G, which asserts its own unprovability. Further, Godel showed that if the axioms of the system are consistent (meaning that it is impossible to derive two contradictory sentences from them) then G is indeed unprovable: since if a proof for G existed, then it would also be possible to prove its negation, making the system inconsistent. The converse also holds: discovery of a proof for G's negation would imply the existence of a proof for G. In other words, if the axioms are consistent, then G is formally undecidable.

Godel further noted that, although unprovable within the formal system itself, the sentence G can in fact be proved true via metamathematical reasoning. In fact, the immediately preceding discussion shows this: since we have established that no proof for G can exist, and since this is exactly the assertion made by G about itself, G is a true statement. Thus the system not only contains an undecidable sentence, but: since it contains a true, unprovable sentence: the system is also incomplete. (The term "completeness", applied to a formal system, implies that all true statements in the system are derivable from its axioms.) What is more, simply adding G to the axioms would not suffice to make the system complete, since exactly the same process could be applied to this augmented system to obtain another, similarly undecidable, sentence. Godel thus shattered all hope of ever constructing a consistent, complete formal system.

The final blow landed by Godel's paper was a demonstration of the impossibility of proving a formal system's consistency via a proof expressible within the system itself. A brief description of how he obtained this result follows. Above we saw how, from the assumption that the system's axioms were consistent, Godel proved that it contained a true, undecidable sentence and was thus incomplete. It turns out that the proof of this fact:

If this system is consistent, then it is incomplete.

is achievable within the system itself. To see how, note that the sentence G, which asserts its own unprovability, is equivalent to the statement "This system is incomplete", since it gives an explicit example of a true, undecidable sentence. Thus the statement above is equivalent to:

(This system is consistent) implies that G is true.

Next, let A be the statement "There exists a sentence which is unprovable". This claim is in fact equivalent to asserting the system's consistency, since if the system were inconsistent, then every sentence would be provable. (This is closely related to the fact that, if we have a false statement p in any logical system, then the sentence "p implies q" is true for any sentence q.) Hence the above statement may be expressed within the formal system as simply "A implies G". Godel showed that this latter sentence was formally provable within the system. Now, assume that a proof for A, i.e., a proof of the system's consistency, also existed. Then since we have proofs for both A and "A implies G", we have a proof of G. But G was previously proven unprovable. Therefore no proof of A can exist: the system cannot prove its own consistency.

Consequences of Godel's proof

Godel's findings were the catalyst for many philosophical controversies which continue even to the present day. The Oxford philosopher J.R. Lucas has made the claim that Godel's theorem precludes the existence of artificial intelligence, since any calculating machine is isomorphic to a formal system to which Godel's theorem applies. Others, notably Douglas Hofstadter, dismiss this view as "a transient moment of anthropocentric glory" and claim that Godel's proof may even offer insights about the workings of human intelligence which will be useful in the creation of AI.

Whilst the dream of establishing secure foundations for mathematics has never recovered from Godel's attack, his findings have not been construed as a reason to abandon all hope of extracting meaning from mathematical inquiry. Godel himself seemed to hold the view that Platonic realism provided the clearest definition of mathematical truth: of mathematical concepts, he said "It seems to me that the assumption of such objects is quite as legitimate as the assumption of physical bodies and there is quite as much reason to believe in their existence". According to Davis and Hersh, most modern mathematicians also secretly subscribe to Platonism: "like an underground religion, it is observed in private and rarely mentioned in public".

Godel's methods also sparked various fruitful lines of investigation which had far-reaching consequences. Since the publication of his paper, the first naturally-arising example of an undecidable set-theoretic statement has been found. Known as the continuum hypothesis, it is the statement that no set has a cardinality greater than that of the natural numbers but less than that of the reals. Godel himself showed in 1937 that this hypothesis cannot be proved from the axioms of set theory; Paul J. Cohen demonstrated in 1964 that neither can it be disproved.

A fascinating variant of Godel's theorem was discovered in 1970, when it was proved that no general algorithm for solving all Diophantine equations (polynomial equations with integer coefficients and roots) can be formulated. Loosely, it can be shown that in any formal number theory, a Diophantine equation exists which is in some sense equivalent to Godel's self-denying sentence G. Such an equation can be interpreted as stating of itself that it has no solutions; in fact, if a solution were found, one could construct from it the Godel number of a proof that the equation had no solutions. It seems unlikely that we have come close to exhausting the list of surprises derived from Godel's work. Perhaps von Neumann may be allowed the last word on Godel's significance:

Kurt Godel's achievement in modern logic is singular and monumental: indeed it is more than a monument, it is a landmark which will remain visible far in space and time... The subject of logic has certainly completely changed its nature and possibilities with Godel's achievement.

The Steam-Powered Turing Machine

2008-10-28T22:09:00.003+05:30

Here's an interesting type of Turing Machine I found on the University of Washington website while surfing the net...

The "Steam-Powered Turing Machine" mural was painted on a stairwell wall of Sieg Hall in 1987 by a dozen first-year graduate students seeking diversion on the eve of the qualifying examination.

The SPTM was originally conjured up a few years before this by Professor Alan Borning. Borning was undertaking a revision of the graduate program brochure. Professor Larry "Tomorrow" Ruzzo was late with his biographical information for the brochure - real late. In desperation, Borning threatened to provide text himself if Ruzzo failed to come through. The threat didn't work, and when the printing deadline arrived, Borning followed through - that year's graduate brochure carried the following description of Ruzzo's research interests:-

Currently, his principal research project involves the construction and programming of a vaguely parallel computer, consisting of 32 steam-powered Turing machines installed in the basement of Sieg Hall. Of particular interest is the use of triple-expansion bypass valves, coupled to individual governors on each engine, to achieve write-synchronization of the machines. Graduate students have played an important role in the construction and operation of the engine, particularly in stoking the boilers, and advanced undergraduates are occasionally allowed to polish the brass gauges.

Originally intended as a general computing engine, restrictions imposed by the Pollution Control and Noise Abatement Boards require that only algorithms running in polynomial time may be used. The project recently suffered another setback when one of Professor Ruzzo's graduate students slipped on a mouldering stack of ungraded homework exercises and fell under the write head of one of the machines. Now permanently embossed with a series of 1's and 0's, the student is suing to have the machine dismantled.

(In a peculiar twist, Ruzzo received a number of requests for reprints from departments of mining engineering in Eastern Europe!)

Indra Sinha long listed for $110,000 Australia-Asia Literary Award

2008-10-27T16:51:00.001+05:30

Indra Sinha has been longlisted for $110,000 Australia-Asia Literary Award. The longlist for the Australia-Asia Literary Award was announced on October 17, 2008 by Culture and Arts Minister John Day.

The Australia-Asia Literary Award is the richest literary award in Australia and Asia valued at AUD $110,000.

This ground-breaking award is for a book-length work of literary fiction written by an author resident in Australia or Asia, or a work primarily set in Australia or an Asian country. Works must have been either written in, or translated into, English and published in the preceding year.

Recognizing the increasing predominance of electronic media and to emphasize the Award’s focus on literary merit, no matter what the format; the Award is open to any book-length work of literary fiction published either electronically or in print.

All works submitted must be nominated by publishers and written in the English language. If the winning entry is a work translated into English, the author will receive AUD $88,000 and the translator AUD $22,000.

Entries for the award closed on May 31, 2008.

The winner of the Australia-Asia Literary Award and the Western Australian Premier's Book Award Premier's Prize will be announced at an awards ceremony on Friday November 21, 2008 at Fraser's Restaurant in Kings Park, Western Australia

Australia-Asia Literary Award Longlist

J. M. COETZEE Diary of a Bad Year Publisher: Random House Group Ltd
Matthew CONDON The Trout Opera Publisher: Random House (Vintage)
Michelle DE KRETSER The Lost Dog Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Ceridwen DOVEY Blood Kin Publisher: Atlantic Books
Rodney HALL Love without Hope Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Mohsin HAMID The Reluctant Fundamentalist Publisher: Penguin
Mireille JUCHAU Burning In Giramondo Publishing
David MALOUF The Complete Stories Publisher: Random House
Alex MILLER Landscape of Farewell Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Haruki MURAKAMI After Dark Translator: Jay Rubin Publisher: Random House Group
Indra SINHA Animal’s People Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
Janette TURNER HOSPITAL Orpheus Lost Publisher: HarperCollins

Urban Voices: A Literary Anthology On Bombay

2008-05-08T22:06:00.006+05:30

My work appears in an anthology titled Urban Voice edited by Sunil Poolani. The theme for the anthology is the city of Bombay - the perennial favorite. Praise for earlier issue of Urban Voice appears here. Also featured in the anthology is Murzban Shroff, author of Breathless In Bombay. His well-crafted tragi-comic piece can be read here. Also there's Jane Bhandari whom I know only by reputation, courtesy the fantastic community of Caferati. Her work can be found here.

Paying Homage To Tagore

2008-05-08T21:45:00.007+05:30

Today is Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore's birth anniversary. In the memory of a great poet, novelist, playwright, philosopher, musician, educationist and visionary...

I do not leave the trace of wings in the air,
But I'm glad I had my flight.
-Rabindranath Tagore

Eight Weird Things About Me

2008-03-26T13:27:00.006+05:30

In the memory of a blog that was updated quite regularly until a month back, I'm taking up the tag by Aloi which is nearly two months old. Thanks Aloi for some fodder for thought; I seem to be starved of it for quite some time now. Here are eight of the many weird things about me:-

I do not like speaking unless it's absolutely necessary or enjoyable; I studiously hate small talk. The written word can claim so much more pith and consequence than speech that the latter seems almost mundane and unnecessary in comparison.
I love walking. It helps me clear my head and think of solutions I might not be able to think of otherwise.
I love Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and can listen to it for hours on end. In fact, I almost never change to another song once I put it on.
I am Indian and I do not understand cricket. Period.
Whether in words or in colors, I do not like capturing things that are apparently and easily beautiful. I rather like to capture things in a way which reveals smaller beauties that are concealed beneath the surface of routine and are difficult to capture.
I love good books. Someone once told me that reading a good book ten times is better than reading ten bad books; I would make the count hundred.
I've a thing for Bengali language, literature and culture. I wish to travel the length and breadth of Bengal someday.
I'm extremely non-judgmental. If I love something, I praise it heartily. If I don't like something, I pack up and move on. Different people want different things from life, and it is best not to try to stick to the rut of our opinions too much. My opinions are anyways not precious to me; I try to argue against them and refine them all the time.

In keeping with the good graces of some of my fellow bloggers, I do not wish to tag anyone in particular. If this tag strikes your fancy, please have a go at it. And please let me know so that I can read your version of eight random things about me and have a much needed laugh at your expense. ;-)

Done with that! Now for some (more) candid talk. When I started with this blog, it was an end in itself. But in thinking about it over the past few days, it has crossed my mind that this blog has gradually become incidental, the means to an end as of yet vague in description. It's purpose has changed to exploring other people's blogs and lives and basking in the awareness of how different lives can be even for people living in the same city, not to speak of the chasm that separates people on different continents. And yet there is a great universality to what we all seek and seek to express. And my quiet awareness of this universality seems to be growing as I lurk on blogs by people I do not know (which is what I've been doing all this while that this blog has remained forlorn), taking away pieces of a shared existence without letting the blogger even know about it.

Also I'm about to finish college in a week or so and conclude an education which unfortunately has not taught me anything. I hope that I can laugh at the useless wretchedness of it all after a few years. But then I know I will be able to.

Be Careful, Tread Softly, You Are Living A Dream

2008-02-13T11:31:00.010+05:30

That's the way I feel. I knew that I would try getting a novel published sooner or later. But this is much more than I'd expected. My Book Pitch got four publishers interested at The Kala Ghoda Arts Festival. And as expected, I'm over the moon.

I like the fact that I don't know where this may lead me. But I know that I've arrived and am here to stay. And I do not say this with arrogance, but with a calm solitude of the person who knows that he has found a calling worth cherishing for the rest of his life through thick or thin. In fact, I count the announcement being made at the David Sassoon Library as an apt omen for the commencement of my writing career.

I find my situation slightly strange, because most of the blogger-cum-writers I know usually have an agent who takes care of all the details that bother us writers, including finding a suitable publisher for the books. In fact, McKoala got an agent recently. And here I've four publishers interested, and I don't yet have an agent to take care of things. God bless me!

Here's a brief outline of the book pitch:

Set in the fictional world of Prince of Wales Medical College attached to Queen Elizabeth Memorial (QEM) Hospital, the novel revolves around the lives of its four central characters – Vinay Sengupta, Bhoomika Sen, Shyamsunder Chatterji, and Arnaz Eduljee.

Vinay is the son of a retired lieutenant colonel, who wants Vinay to join the army as a medical officer when he is done with his studies.

Bhoomika is the daughter of a rich beer baron and a classical singer. Her parents had separated when she was four years old and she has grown up with her mother.

With a banker for his father and a housewife for his mother, Shyamsunder is a bourgeois nerd whose only accomplishment to date is his admission to the prestigious medical school.

The only non-Bengali protagonist, Arnaz is the daughter of a small-time industrialist mother. From her, Arnaz has inherited the verve and vivacity which make her the cynosure of attention on all occasions.

Set amidst the turmoil of anti-reservation riots that flare up across the country, A Cure For The Doctor tells the story of these doctors grappling with the thrill of their newfound affections, the burden of their noble profession, and the apathy of an indifferent government.

Other successful book pitches may be found here.

This book is not the sort that I might normally write - it has more to do with plot and incident than with the literary novel of detached observations that I may be able to pull off easily. You could even classify it as chick-lit or lad-lit due to certain lightheartedness of the romantic plot. For me though, the attempt will largely be styloclastic, if the word exists. It will be a sharp deviation from the sort of literature I appreciate and that I might write in the future. It will be in fact like an illegitimate child with a history more colorful and intriguing than legitimacy can provide.

I wish to thank Peter Griffin, Jason Evans, Sarah Hina, and Amogh Bhole for helping make this possible for me in some way or the other.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed and waiting to see how things shape up. Meanwhile living the dream while it lasts...

My Heart - A Preview

2008-02-08T14:09:00.001+05:30

Bae Chang-Ho’s My Heart shall be screened today at the Max Mueller Bhavan at 1830 hours i. e. 6:30 in the evening. The director is considered the foremost exponent of the Korean New Wave cinema. In a stark departure from his usual style of film-making, My Heart is set in the Korea of 1920’s.

The movie is shot amidst the beautiful scenery of Korea. It tells the story of Sun-Yi (played by Kim Yoo-Mi, the director’s wife), who is married off to a ten-year old spoiled brat. When her husband grows past adolescence, he brings home a mistress much to the petrifaction of Sun-Yi. The movie tells the story of how Sun-Yi leaves home and searches for an identity of her own. In a way, the movie mirrors the struggle of Korea to find its identity in a shrinking world.

Here’s what director Bae Chang-Ho thought of his movie’s purpose:

In 1985, I filmed Deep Blue Night, which dealt with the issue of identity among illegal Korean immigrants in the U.S.

It has been many years since then and today Korea is experiencing the effects of globalization. The government has made English a must-learn foreign language, which students are required to learn. As the boundaries of culture have become somewhat ambiguous, I think it is time to think seriously about Korean identity.

The answer to the question, ‘Who are Koreans?’ has been the driving force behind making My Heart. I hope people around the world can understand the psychological characteristics of Koreans represented by jung (love, affection) in this movies.

My Heart, my 15th film, has its background in the beginning of the 20th century when the traditional culture of Korea was vividly alive. I hope it shows the origins of Korean way of thinking.

The movie has won the First Prize and Audience Award at Benodes International Film Festival, France and the Audience Award, Udine Far East Film Festival, Italy.

Experimental Cinema For The Cinéastes - The Return Of Solitude

2008-02-08T13:26:00.001+05:30

Two of the gems of experimental cinema - Manhatta and The Man With The Movie-Camera - were screened at the Gallery Beyond yesterday. Since I missed the first one (I watched it on the internet anyway), I shall review only The Man With The Movie-Camera.

Made in 1929 by Dziga Vertov with cinematography by his brother Mikhail Khaufman, The Man With The Movie-Camera captures the Russian life in all its avatars. The movie has no story as such, yet one could call it the story of a people and a time.

The movie shows the Russian way of life in minute detail, and not often in the sad way that directors of art movies are wont to perceive. The camera captures in a most natural way the beautifully uncertain smiles, the lips that make unheard whispers, basking ladies, the victories and the excitement, the routine and the indifference - all captured with the devouring eye of a greedy voyeur and the detailed panache of a keen observer. The result is a movie which speaks of life without judgment and the consequent pitfalls that a jaundiced eye brings to the task of film-making.

Dziga Vertov made use of a variety of cinematographic techniques in this movie. The double exposures, the use of slow motion and fast motion techniques, still shots, multiple split-screens were especially prominent and effective throughout the movie.

Made by him in response to critics who ridiculed his earlier film One-Sixth Part Of The World, The Man With The Movie-Camera was Vertov’s cinematic experiment without the use of a premeditated script, actors, sets, and intertitles. And throughout the movie, this fact of experimentation is highlighted when the movie shows a giant camera apprehending the scenes of common life or when it shows people in the theatre watching the man with the movie-camera do his job of (what else but) making a movie.

For me, the darkness, the quiet and the solitude of Gallery Beyond have become as much a part of the experience as the movies themselves. And I seem to grudge when the lights come on and it’s time to leave.

Experimental Cinema For The Cinéastes - The Loss Of Solitude

2008-02-07T13:53:00.000+05:30

The third session of Experimental Cinema screenings (and my second), Gallery Beyond showcased the last four of Avant-Garde movies they had chosen to screen. I say chosen to screen because the Avant-Garde Collection (from which the movies are being shown) is a much wider collection comprising many more movies than time would have allowed them to show.

The four movies screened were:

Regen (Rain) (Netherlands, 1929) directed by Joris Ivens, 14 minutes: This is a movie every Bombayite would love to watch, especially if you’ve grown up watching the rain and what gentle poetry it can create on the streets and in the minds of men. If you can catch this short film anytime, please do so. It is a lovely evocation of rain in Amsterdam and how people react to it. Perhaps the most lyrical of all Avant-Garde movies, it is for the best that it is a silent movie. The gentle strumming of the guitar throughout the movie is the only sound the movie has. It is the director’s best documentary before he moved on to doing political documentaries. It is now my favorite documentary; when you have watched it, it will be yours too.
H2O (US, 1929) directed by Ralph Steiner, 12 minutes: This movie demonstrates what light can do with surfaces, especially with water. An intensive exploration of the play between light and water, it soon delves into abstractions leaving the consciousness of the existence of water behind. Recommended only if you love the sort of cinema that academics can argue and debate over.

Even - As You And I (US, 1937) directed by Roger Barlow, Harry Hay, and LeRoy Robbins, 12 minutes: A story of how three directors, fed up with the traditional boy meets girl plot, decide to create a surreal movie for a competition. A funny take on surrealism, it shows the three directors shooting the movie from every angle, even inside drains and on electricity poles. Finally when they are done with the movie, the deadline for the contest has already passed. The movie ends with them seeing the ad for another competition of surreal cinema.
Ballet Méchanique (France, 1924) directed by Fernand Leger, 11 minutes: The only movie which I did not like, perhaps for lack of knowledge. It shows different objects in repetitive motion and from different perspectives. I have to agree that this was perhaps the most experimental of the experimental genre.

After the four movies one of which was a spoof of surreal cinema, an anthology of surreal cinema was screened. Then two of Luis Bunuel’s movies - Un Chien Andalou and L’Age D’Or both of which were absolutely likeable classics. I’d not planned to sit through them but saw them anyway.

However, there was a noisy crowd to watch the movies with cells ringing and whispers doing the rounds and the shifting of chairs and the moving of people and one guy even suppressing his laughter at his simple comprehension of the complexity of L’Age D’Or, unlike my first time when the screening hall was perfectly calm and silent and it was fun watching the great movies.

Chana Chai Nukkad Natak

2008-02-06T13:13:00.000+05:30

Thanks to the innovative organizers of this play, I don’t have to think of a title for this post. ;-)

Organized by Nitin Das and the Sheikh brothers, Chana Chai Nukkad Natak featured two plays enacted wholly by kids from the Akanksha NGO (with some prodding from Nitin who sat at the back of the stage directing the kids and correcting their cute faux pases).

The first play was about a man saddled with an ailing mother, and two brothers - one mad, and the other given to drinking a lot. He wishes to get his mother to a good hospital, to get his mad brother married, and to gift his drinking brother a career. To that end, he forges fake banknotes. The man gives a fake 500 rupees note to his mother, who buys groceries (or ration as it is called out of habit in India, thanks to the Raj’s and then the government’s policy of rationing food). The shopkeeper later recognizes the fake and adulterates food in order to compensate for the loss. The adulterated ration is bought by a lady whose jobless husband eats it, and goes to an interview with a sick stomach. Rejected in the interview, he becomes a nakli doctor. Finally the drinking brother of the man who had forged the note falls ill and is killed by the fake medicine administered by the fake doctor. The play was aptly titled Nakli Duniya.

The second play was about a lad from Patna who apparently learns Karate by watching Mithun Chakraborty movies, comes first in a Karate championship, and with the prize money comes to Bombay to become a film actor. Since he does not know how to read and write, he is looted and chased away by everyone. Finally he meets Munna Bhai who ensures him a role in a movie. But on the sets, the lad is not able to read his dialogues. I forget the name of the play.

The plays had a makeshift workshop feel to them, the sort that theatre practices often have. Both the plays drew huge rounds of applause from the people, who seemed in no mood to hold back any praise that the performers deserved.

There was some scope for further practice in the second play. Nevertheless, even the blunders made by the kids were adorable and the effort made by Nitin Das to provide kids from Akanksha a stage at the Kala Ghoda Fest is commendable indeed to say the least.

Odissi At The Rampart Row Amphitheatre

2008-02-06T11:55:00.000+05:30

The Avant-Garde movie screenings at Gallery Beyond ended twenty minutes early in spite of the organizers thankfully repeating the first two movies by Man Ray which I’d missed on account of being late. I rushed to Eros to catch Bow Barracks Forever; expectedly I was told that the Preview Theatre was filled to capacity. I took a ride back to Kala Ghoda thinking I might have missed the Kathak performance, but might as well drink in on the later performances.

I arrived halfway through the Odissi performance by Ms. Sujata Mohapatra. It was the first classical performance I saw being held in an open-air theatre, so I had my reservations. But Mohapatra’s excellent performance soon dispelled all of them.

Wearing the white raiment and adornments of an Odissi dancer, she might as well have personified the quality of purity. Her dance was one energetic, controlled expression of sublime artistry; her countenance and hands in perfect tandem with the moods of the song being sung.

The music too was splendid, especially the mellifluous vocals (I think it was Bengali/Oriya folk though I’m not quite sure) and the mesmerizing violin and flute whose flourishes were as brilliant as the lithe movements of the dancer’s hands.

There was some clapping in the middle of the performance, but I think it was because the people thought the performance had ended when it was only the music and the dance getting grave and poignant, rather than due to any distaste or boredom. The performance was on the whole a very pleasant affair.

And now for something off the stage. I was standing on the farthest steps of the Amphitheatre, where all the equipment for coordinating sound and lights is arranged. There were two guys handling the stuff - one guy was working on the sounds (let’s call him the sound man) and the other on the lights (let’s call him the light guy). Apparently the light guy wasn’t quite upto it, so every time the lights on the stage had to be changed or the spotlight turned on, the sound man would shout instructions to the light guy, the light guy would fumble with the lights unsuccessfully, then the sound man would get to the lights in a jiffy and do the needful. This hilarious thing happened quite often.

The delay in changing the lights caused funny situations. Once during the performance, when the rains and the storm were supposed to have caused havoc (that’s what the song was about), the music had already turned clarion, the dancer’s face was filled with a show of fear, but the the lights remained as calm as ever while the light guy tried his best to change them. Finally, the sound man got exasperated, got out of his comfortable seat, and changed the lights, bringing the sense of storm on stage.

But Mohapatra was hardly bothered by it, indeed she must’ve not even noticed it so absorbing was her performance both to herself and the viewers. And for that she and the musicians got a huge round of applause in the end.

Experimental Cinema For The Cinéastes - The Gift Of Solitude

2008-02-05T23:21:00.000+05:30

I was lazing around in the afternoon and almost on a whim, I decided to attend the Avant-Garde movie screenings held at the Gallery Beyond. And it was so good that at the end of it, I cursed myself for being lazy and not attending on previous days.

The map for the festival does not pinpoint the location of the Gallery. And nobody except the a man standing outside Max Mueller could tell me where Gallery was. As a result, I arrived at the Gallery a full one hour late. To add to my woes, the watchman there told me that games were being played at the Gallery (Yahaan toh khel khila rahein hain).

Just as I was about to leave thinking that the event had been shifted to some other venue at the last minute for which notifications could not be put up on the website, a man told me that movies were indeed being screened at the Gallery and directed me to a door. I entered a darkened hall where the movies were being screened. It was only when my eyes adjusted to the light and I spotted paintings hanging on the walls around me that I realized I’d been ushered into the gallery itself.

The movies were perhaps the best ones I’ve seen in a long time. The immense poetry and purpose of the cinema that I was subjected to reminded me of the thing that I once wrote as a comment on some blog:

Cinema is visual panache and and an eye for detail… It is the story-telling which needs more than cinema to be successful… But after a certain stage, one loses the desire for incident in the movies one watches. As in literature, I want a deeply uninhibited artistic expose once in a while in the movies I watch (never mind if it is wrong or unpopular). So I have relished a movie that shows a sleeping face pass through its various stages of sleep, or an apple captured in the hands of a person with a certain staccato movement of the camera, and many others. It is these experiments that make up cinema for me, I’ve never looked for stories in the movies I like, though that is an added bonus. It is just that my attention is held by the camera and the way it moves much more than anything that it can capture… Cinema ought to have an essay-like pondering quality for it to be worthwhile…

What makes the grace and the nuances of the movies even more deserving of respect is the fact that the sort of cinematic experiments that were showcased in the movies must have been extremely difficult in the 1920’s and 1930’s without the benefit of tricks of our digital age.

The screenings included the following movies (not including any which I might have missed due to being late):

Le Tempestaire (The Tempest) (France, 1947) directed by Jean Epstein, 22 minutes: Perhaps the only movie which had some sort of tangible story, The Tempest was perhaps the most lyrical of the day’s finds. It tells the story of a woman whose lover goes out to sea for fishing. Soon, a storm brews up and the woman fears for her lover’s life. Her mother tells her of a man who can sing a song to soothe the raging sea. She goes to the man and offers him her necklace. He refuses to accept anything, but sings a song into a crystal ball that soothes the sea and brings back the lover to the woman’s door. One of Epstein’s best, this movie makes use of slow motion visuals as well as audio. The way the tempest is captured is majestic to say the least.
Romance Sentimentale (France, 1930) directed by Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori V. Alexandrov, 16 minutes: Starring the mistress of a rich Parisian, the movie for the most part shows her singing a song. The notes said it bears the mark of Eisenstein in the beginning (though I would not know having watched Eisenstein for the first time myself).
Autumn Fire (US, 1931) directed by Herman G. Weinberg, 15 minutes: Best described as a poem in the disguise of a movie, it revolves around the thoughts of two lovers. Shot by Weinberg as a marriage proposal to the star of the movie Erna Bergman, it draws parallels between the story of love and the changing seasons. Bergman married Weinberg within a week of seeing the finished movie. The movie is one of my favorites in the Avant-Garde series.
Le Retour à la Raison (Return to Reason) (France, 1923) directed by Man Ray, 2 minutes: Ray’s attempt at creating surreal cinema, it was not accepted by the surrealists. It was created on a whim for being screened at one of the Dada soirées.
Emak-Bakia (Leave Me Alone) (France, 1926) directed by Man Ray, 16 minutes: Another one by Man Ray, it was a longer attempt at surrealism, the scenes of lucidity serving only to punctuate the surrealist escapades.

In fact, the last two of the list were repeats for those who had come late and missed them in the beginning.

Lost In Translation

2008-02-03T13:02:00.000+05:30

In the one hour I had between the two writing workshops An Introduction To Freelance Writing and The Art Of Translation yesterday, I wandered the corridors of Elphinstone College and its narrow dark staircases that looked as if they belonged to a cold time-forgotten castle more than a college.

I even happened to venture unnoticed into their staff room which has six larger-than-life portraits hung across its walls. And guess what I found!!! One of the portraits was of William Wordsworth (eponymous grandson of the great poet William Wordsworth), who was a principal of the college at one time. Another portrait was that of Peter Peterson, who had been a Professor of Oriental Languages in the college. It might be history to those who know Elphinstone, but it is certainly news to me.

As for The Art Of Translation workshop that followed, it soon regressed into The Craft Of Translation workshop. It is very necessary to have an agenda or at least a purpose which implicitly sets some sort of tacit agenda, especially if the workshop session is going to be as long as three hours. The discussion was often punctuated with silences that hovered in the air of Elphinstone’s Seminar Hall which hosted the poorly attended workshop.

A lot of discussion took place on the problems of finding suitable publishers for translated work, why small publishing houses make a success of it while big publishing houses shy away from it, and the lack of qualified, experienced translators and an agency that unites them and protects their rights. Also the practical difficulties that a translator may encounter while translating from one language to the other (often the second language is English) were discussed in great detail. Attention was also paid to the problems of typesetting and transcreation.

In all, four people attended the workshop including me. One of them was Meera Desai who had translated some stories from Gujarati. Rimi had a look at the manuscript, liked the stories very much, and promised Desai to do something about them. There was a girl who had worked extensively with BNHS, right from the editing stages to the printing stages of its journals and magazines. Then there was a guy who does technical translation from French to English for an organization. I was the only one with little knowledge of translation, and perhaps that is why the workshop didn’t work wonders for me. In the end, the workshop grew intensely boring and meaningful, like a Proust novel with little pace.

The saving grace for me was that the talk was interspersed with discussions on translation of Bengali Literature. I’ve a weakness for Bengali, and for me it has always meant much more than a language. I took Bengali classes some years back, learnt the alphabet, even some poems, then abandoned it midway for no reason at all. But sometimes I still go back to the thin, translucent pages of my textbooks on the Bengali alphabet and Introductory Bengali Literature and sigh with quiet pleasure.

The workshop could have been productive except that it mostly became an analytical debate rather than a workshop. Ultimately art is more important than (and sometimes far removed from) the issues.

Perhaps Rimi Chatterji’s time could have been better used if she had taken a workshop on The Art Of Writing A Novel, especially since her second novel The City Of Love has been published recently.

Crafting The Perfect Pitch

2008-02-02T23:28:00.000+05:30

Braving the inclement weather in the morning (I do not do this even for the most important of my college lectures, preferring to amble into the lecture hall only after noon), I managed to reach Elphinstone College well on time. The trains were empty on account of the weekend, and minus the effort that one needs to exercise in the daunting crowds of Bombay locals, the faces of commuters looked sadly careworn and unoccupied.

Held in Elphinstone’s Seminar Hall, Kavitha Rao’s workshop was quite a success - in addition to the twenty people already registered for the event, there were others who dropped by and had to be accommodated. (It would have been that wee bit better if all of them had showed up on time and not trickled in one by one throughout the duration of the workshop.)

A quick note on Kavitha Rao:

Kavitha Rao has lived and worked in London, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Tokyo, and reported from Cairo, Beijing, Seoul and various cities in India. She currently lives in Bombay.

I came across her website just a few months back while researching an article on the internet. I think it was her review of Rana Dasgupta’s Tokyo Cancelled in South China Morning Post that caught my eye. I remember thinking that it must take a gritty freelancer to sell such a story to SCMP.

And her website is another lesson in making the right first impressions, especially in a profession where first impressions can often also be the last. Though her website is clean, free of frills, and minimalistic, it exudes a quiet authority, is regularly updated and never undersells her strengths as a freelancer. In short, just the sort of online portfolio that can make an editor sit up and take notice.

Kavitha began her workshop by asking the us why we wanted to do freelancing. Somebody said that she did not want to do it for the money but for the satisfaction it offered of seeing one’s name in print. That set the stage for an engaging and productive workshop on the craft and business of freelancing.

Though two hours is not enough time to give a lot of lessons in freelancing, Kavitha did her best to squeeze in as much as she could. She spoke about how it is important to read a lot of newspapers in order to pick up story ideas, why it is necessary to analyze your market before you make a pitch, why it is important to have a hook/peg on which to rest the story idea (the reason why the editor must decide in favor of your article amidst the large volume of submissions he receives), and the mistakes that a budding freelancer may make and how to avoid them.

Somebody raised the question - What if the editor steals the story idea and gives it to a staff reporter? From her experience, Kavitha replied that though this was an inherent occupational peril with freelancing, the chances of it happening were very slim (about one in a hundred cases).

Another query raised was what should a freelancer do if he felt that a badly edited article in print reflected on his skills as a writer, even if it wasn’t his fault. To this, Kavitha’s simple reply was - Don’t you agree that the editor knows his magazine more than you do? If there is a factual error, you may point that out, but never make the mistake of telling an editor what his magazine should look or read like. He probably knows it way better than a freelancer does.

The best thing about the workshop was Kavitha’s candor and her realistic attitude towards the business of freelance journalism. The freelancer needs to understand that it is he who is dependent on the editor and not the other way round. It only harms a freelancer’s career if he speaks rudely to an editor; the publishing business is after all based on relationships. Kavitha also discussed what should be the ideal time for which a freelancer may wait before sending the editor a polite reminder (about a week for submissions sent electronically and a fortnight for submissions sent via post, though the rules vary with each market) and ways in which to write such a reminder.

Kavitha made no bones about accepting the fact that Indian publications pay a pittance to freelancers (if they pay at all) and that it was probably better to look at Western markets instead of lamenting the sorry state of Indian publishing industry. She shared some of her experiences on publishing with Indian newspapers and magazines, which unfortunately were not very good. She answered the queries raised by people attending the workshop, many of whom were practicing freelancers themselves.

The most important part of the workshop was the discussion on what constitutes that most elusive thing - a perfect pitch - and how to write one. Kavitha discussed many of her pitches which she considered good ones, so as to demonstrate the essentials that go into a good pitch. As the discussion progressed, some best practices emerged which will be very helpful to those who attended the session and plan to pursue freelancing ahead and some of which I remember well enough to summarize here:

When in doubt, leave out. Whether it is the ambiguity of salutation in connection with unisex names or certain facts and figures that cannot be readily verified or the question of something that might be construed as libel, it is better to steer clear of any vagueness and limit oneself to ground reality.
If it makes you look good, put it in. If it makes you look bad, leave it out. Another very useful cardinal rule, when writing query letters.
Show, don’t tell. An aphorism that can be attributed to Henry James, Kavitha mentioned that it one of her best practices that stands her in good stead no matter which genre of writing one is tackling.

The second session of the workshop takes place tomorrow morning at 1030 hours. The pitches that people will write and bring along with themselves will be discussed in the workshop so that they can realize their mistakes and write better pitches, so as to woo editors into handing them those plum assignments.

Update (February 9, 2008): A mail today in the inbox of Caferati-Bombay folks read:

Thanks to everyone who attended my workshop, and took the time to post here. As a freelance writer who spends way too much time in seclusion, it was great to get out and meet people. It was only my second workshop, so yes, I did learn a great deal. Thanks also to Peter, Annie, Manisha, Rashmi, Anushka and everyone else on the KGAF committee who helped make this possible.

Best wishes,
Kavitha Rao

Kavitha, it was a learning experience for us to listen to a veteran talk about her experiences and impart wisdom gleaned by years of practicing the wayward art of freelancing. Especially after Griffin let us know that all the workshop leaders created and ran their workshops without charging a rupee.

I cannot believe it was only your second workshop. So planned and practiced, it looked like you had been doing it for ages. I hope that such workshops keep happening in the future to impart some gyaan to us fellas. Thanks a ton.

The Kala Ghoda Arts Festival

2008-01-31T13:25:00.000+05:30

This year's Kala Ghoda Arts Festival takes place from 2 February to 10 February, both days inclusive. The complete roster of events may be found here or here.

On behalf of the Literature section of the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, the blog of the fest is hosted and literary contests held by Caferati, a global writers’ community with roots in all major cities of India and even outside the country. There is a huge effort to make the Literature events inclusive, to give aspiring writers a chance not just to listen to the established ones talk, but to actively learn from them, and to try their skills in contests and the like, to participate.

The festival hosts five literary contests this year, including one which could get you published. The deadline for all of them is 3 February, 2008, so hurry:

SMS Poetry
SMS Poetry has one simple guideline: The entire poem must be short enough to fit into a single 160-character SMS (blanks and punctuation marks count as characters and a line break counts as two). Always a big draw, this contest is now in its fourth year at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival.

Flash Fiction
Flash Fiction (also called micro-fiction or short-shorts) presents a simple challenge: Tell a story with all the classical elements: a beginning, a middle and an end, a conflict and a resolution, a credible protagonist... but do so in a very limited number of words (not more than 300 words to be specific). Flash Fiction is now in its third year at the Kala Ghoda writing contests.

Poetry Slam
The Slam is about performance poetry. Poets get on stage and perform their work. The audience has a say in whether they stay or leave. Reality show style, except Slams predate reality television. The slam made its debut last year (the first in India, actually) to much enjoyment from the audience and the participants. It involves writing four poems on four assigned topics (this year's topics being Name, Place, Animal, and Thing) and performing them in front of judges and an audience.

Flash Essay
Making its debut this year, this contest widens the genres that Kala Ghoda contests cover, into the interesting area of non-fiction. The twist here is that the essays must, like everything else these days, adjust to the age of information overload: They must make their point in up to 500 words. We call them flash essays in a nod to the term flash fiction.

Open Book Pitch
This is a new idea, and Caferati's most ambitious. And this despite the fact that there are no guaranteed winners. The Open Book Pitch lets writers submit pitches to publishers and literary agents. (Some of the biggest names in Indian publishing including Penguin India, HarperCollins, and Random House India are signed up, as are some of the exciting newer ones like Siyahi.) The process is anonymous both ways: The writers do not have direct access to the talent scouts from the publishers and agents, and the scouts do not see any personally identifying information until they see something they like. The prize? A chance to be published.

There are three non-competitive events lined up.

The Open Mike
15 minutes for seven out of the nine days of the festival. The event mixes writing with performance. Each Open Mike session will have 6 slots of up to 2 minutes each. These slots are booked on a first-come-first-serve basis every day.

The Open Screen
15 minutes for seven our of the nine days of the festival. The event mixes the word with the visual arts. Participants submit 2-minute films via email. The organizers will choose the best films should we get more entries than time permits them to show.

The Open Wall
A pseudo wall will be erected at the venue. Audience members will be invited to leave their own writing to be displayed there. The organizers will also encourage email submissions.

And finally there are twelve writing workshops, conducted by prominent writers from all over the country.

Picture This (Graphic Story-telling)
Conducted by: Sarnath Banerjee and Samit Basu
The workshop, by two well-known pioneers in the field, will cover graphic stories and graphic reportage.

The Pastoral (Poetic Form)Conducted by: Ranjit HoskoteA master-class for city poets in the art of the poetic form known as the Pastoral, by well-known poet Ranjit Hoskote.

Little Pencils - for children (age 10 +)
Conducted by: Neeru NandaChildren's author Neeru Nanda works with the children, inculcating in them a love for story-telling.

Poetry in Performance
Conducted by: Jeet Thayil
Thayil, a prominent poet and a musician, will lead this master class on the art of performance poetry.

Once Upon a Time - Writing for Children
Conducted by: Jane Bhandari and Marilyn Noronha
How do you write for kids? How do you hold their attention? Two writers and poets who also teach children, lead this workshop.

What Every Writer should know about Publishing
Conducted by: Anita Roy
An editor from a prominent publishing house will tell budding writers all the secrets of making a good impression with publishers.

Writing for Stage
Conducted by: Anuvab Pal
This workshop by a playwright and film writer who has had his plays performed in the USA and India, will introduce participants to the nuts and bolts of playwriting.

PenTathlon - Five exercises for Fiction Writers
Conducted by: Kavita Bhanot
Fiction writing is always a big draw at Kala Ghoda. Here, a literary agent and trainer put budding authors through boot camp.

An Introduction to Freelance Writing
Conducted by: Kavitha Rao
A practicing journalist who writes for publications around the world teaches the basics of making a living as a pen-for-hire.

Writing for Screen
Conducted by: Manisha Lakhe
Writing for the screen is a different game, and you need to learn the rules. This workshop gets you thinking the right way.

The Art of Translation
Conducted by: Rimi B. Chatterjee
India is famous for the number of languages its citizens speak and write. And this workshop will cover the practical problems involved in the process of translation and the publication of translated work.

Poetry Appreciation for Children (10+)
Conducted by: Sampurna ChattarjiThis workshop will look at poetry as play. The attempt will be not to teach poetry, or even write poetry, but to experience poetry - with one's body, with one's senses, with sometimes an abandonment of logic and sometimes a rigorous application of it.

Looks like one jam-packed schedule to me!!! I'm going to be there at the festival. Are you?

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

2008-01-05T23:53:00.000+05:30

Title:- The Satanic Verses
Genre:- Fiction
Subgenre:- Novel
Author:- Salman Rushdie
Publisher:- Viking Press
ISBN Number:- 0-312-27082-8
Price:- £5.99

The Blurb

No book in modern times has matched the uproar sparked by Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, which earned its author a fatwa from Iran's Ayatollahs decreeing his death. Furore aside, it is a marvellously erudite study of good and evil, a feast of language served up by a writer at the height of his powers and a rollicking comic fable. The book begins with two Indians, Gibreel Farishta, who has been for fifteen years the biggest star in the history of the Indian movies, and Saladin Chamcha, a Bombay expatriate returning from his first visit to his homeland in fifteen years, plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their jetliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations. When the jumbo jet blows apart above the English Channel, Gibreel and Saladin are the two who survive and are washed to an English beach. However, it soon becomes clear that curious changes have come over them and that they have been chosen as protagonists in the eternal struggle between God and the Devil.

Rushdie's astonishing powers of invention are at their best in this Booker Prize shortlist and Whitbread Prize winner. Salman Rushdie is the author of Midnight's Children, winner of the 1981 Booker Prize, and Shame.

The Review

The Satanic Verses is a novel which falls in the genre of Magical Realism (a beautiful paradox of our modern times), of which we see much in Gabriel García Márquez's works.

It tells the story of the enchanting Gibreel Farishta who rises from being a pauper in Bombay to a popular filmstar playing Hindu deities in Bollywood mythologicals. The humor in the novel commences when Gibreel refuses to make love to his female admirers with the elephant snout on, which he has used as a prop for playing Lord Ganesha in a movie and which his fans have come to fancy. He complains that an acting career in Bombay is quite less of acting and much more of frantic travel between studios trying to keep schedules.

It also tells the story of the misplaced Saladin Chamcha, who develops an English accent so refined and immaculate that he lends his voice to British radio shows. He shuns his father who loathes books and had sent him away from Bombay to study in Britain. He returns after a long period of absence only to find that the city of his childhood has changed in a quintessential measure.

On his return trip to UK, Saladin Chamcha meets Gibreel Farishta who has absconded in order to meet his flame Annie Cone, the Mount Everest conquerer whom he courted in Bombay. The plane gets hijacked and all but the two protagonists of the novel - Chamcha and Farishta - are dead. The two are washed ashore on the waves of the English Channel, only to find that there has been a major change of roles. Gibreel thereafter suffers hallucinations of being an archangel, while Saladin is transformed into a chimera representing the devil.

Saladin miraculously recovers from the transmogrification and plots his revenge against Gibreel for refusing recognition and help when Saladin was led into custody by policemen. Like Iago, he plots the murder of Annie Cone at the hands of the suspicious and jealous Gibreel Farishta himself. In the climax, Gibreel shoots himself when he realizes what a mistake he has committed.

The novel also runs the course of three mini-plots: The first comprises the tale of Mahound's revelations from Archangel Gibreel, Hind - Mahound's fiercest opponent and Baal - the irreverent poet. The second speaks of the Imam and his gang of terrorists. And the third and most beautiful story is that of Ayesha, the girl who leads poor villagers on a Haj pilgrimage after convincing them that if God willed it, the waters of the Arabian Sea would part to make way for them.

The novel has ample instances of Rushdie-style humor and sarcasm. The narrative though broken into four parallel threads of narration is held together in a very cohesive manner. Rushdie's implicit commentary on the racism prevalent in UK is commendable and should have been the focus of attention, rather than the much publicized and denounced fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini against him. However, the novel is not as erudite as it could have been. It is in no way grand or profound, and does not seek to reveal something that the reader is unaware of. Definitely not one of Rushdie's better novels.

The book was banned in many countries including Iran and India, for propagating the theory of The Satanic Verses - those verses of the Holy Quran which were revealed to the Prophet by the Satan and which he later retracted as being part of the Holy Book of the Moslems. It was fortunate that Salman Rushdie survived the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, since the Japanese translator Igarashi was murdered, and the Italian translator Capriolo suffered serious physical injuries due to being stabbed.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

2008-01-04T01:18:00.000+05:30

I'm almost through with Rohinton Mistry's novel A Fine Balance set in the Emergency (1975-1984). It is pure Bombayana. Written with a mix of caustic insight and deep compassion, Mistry's prose is the most natural ever. He writes like an insider - hell, even makes Rushdie's work feel like an outsider's voice. Rushdie writes in awe; his love for the city is almost filial. Mistry on the other hand knows Bombay for the bitch that she is; his depiction of the city is steeped in amorous love with the whiff of loss looming large over the milieu he creates. It is for this reason that Mistry can write with greater acceptance and credibility of the city's tragedies than Rushdie. I'm on a happy track with the last hundred pages or so of the tome to finish. The whiff of impending tragedy is looming large. Let's hope I get through.

To The Coffee House

2007-12-31T13:23:00.000+05:30

I realized long ago that what I had to say could barely keep one blog going, let alone two blogs at a time. There wasn't a great difference in their themes either, for them to exist separately. So I thought I must have a single blog and try to make it as good as possible. And finally, just before the new year, I've managed to merge my two blogs - which had been growing apart yet together like Siamese twins - into a single coherent whole.

And to bid good bye to The-Year-That-Was, here's a splendid coffeehouse poem by the bohemian Viennese poet Peter Altenberg, whom I discovered today following the trail laid out by Medhini (Now I've newfound respect for coffee):

When you are worried, have trouble of one sort or another - to the coffee house!

When she did not keep her appointment, for one reason or another - to the coffee house!

When your shoes are torn and dilapidated - coffee house!

When your income is four hundred crowns and you spend five hundred - coffee house!

You are a chair warmer in the office, while your ambition led you to to seek professional honors - coffee house!

You could not not find a mate to suit you - coffee house!

You feel like committing suicide - coffee house!

You hate and despise human beings, and at the same time you cannot be happy without them - coffee house!

You compose a poem which you can not inflict upon friends that you meet in the street - coffee house!

When your coal scuttle is empty, and your gas ration exhausted - coffee house!

When you are locked out and haven't the money to pay for unlocking the house door - coffee house!

When you acquire a new flame, and intend provoking the old one, you take the new one to the old one's - coffee house!

When you feel like hiding, you dive into a - coffee house!

When you want to be seen in a new suit - coffee house!

When you can not get anything on trust anywhere else - coffee house!

Happy New Year to all my fellow bloggers! Meet you on the other side of the midnight!! Ciao!!!

Rengetsu And The Cold Night

2007-12-21T17:33:00.000+05:30

The story I am going to narrate today is a fable that has grown to be a leitmotif in my life. It is so important to me that I have spent days gathering the courage to (re)write it (though it is very unlikely that I'll be able to narrate it with the exalted erudition it deserves), and searching for an appropriate image to place it with. For me, it justifies much more than my absence from this blog for a long time - it justifies in ample measure much of my attitude and many of my thoughts, writings and actions. In a sense, it defines the difference between the me I was before I read this story ten years ago and after it.

It is about Rengetsu née Otagaki Nobu (1791-1875), a Buddhist nun who was well-versed with the schools of learning of the Pure Land sect, Zen and Esoteric Buddhism.

Born of a high-ranking Samurai and a Geisha in the city of Kyoto (famous for its long, famous tradition of comely Geishas that remains unbroken to the present day), she was raised by Otagaki Teruhisa, a priest serving at Chionji, head temple of the Pure Land sect of Buddhism. She suffered great tragedies earlier in her life, but later went on to become a successful potter, calligrapher and poet. She is one of the few women who have attained Enlightenment under the Zen school of Buddhism.

One day tired from her travel, Rengetsu reached a village and asked for a place to rest for the night. The village was home to orthodox Buddhists. As soon as they found out that she was following the path of Zen preachings, they turned her out of the village.

Rengetsu was now faced with the twin prospects of spending the night under a tree in the forest (for the village was surrounded by a dense forest on all sides), or continuing her journey in the dead of the night (which was certainly the better and more tiring option, for it did not subject one to the scrutiny of wild animals and the danger of being eaten up by them without the benefit of a struggle). She chose the former and lay down to rest under a tree that bordered the village. She soon fell asleep...

In the middle of the night, she woke up from her sleep due to a strong breeze blowing through the land and howling in her ears. When she looked up at the sky, she was awestruck by the majesty of the tree which was in full bloom and showered her with flowers possessing an ethereal fragrance.

At this act of Providence, she turned towards the village and said an oath of thanks for turning her away.

Due to your utter sensitivity
In turning me away without shelter
On this dark night of a pallid moon,
I find myself showered with flowers from heaven.

She thanked the very people who took offense to the idea of sharing her company for a single night. If it had not been for their act of denial, she would have been sleeping in someone's home, oblivious of the beauty that this night was to offer her - the showering of blossoms, the cold lonely whispering night, and the silent conversation with the moon.

She was not angry with the villagers, and through her acceptance of the tribulations that they had wished upon her, she found a reason to celebrate in the bone-chilling lonely night. She had thus proved herself to be Buddha - The Enlightened One!!!

Mewwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-12-09T19:42:00.000+05:30

HURRAYYYYYYYYY and ROARRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!

Sarah Hina who blogs at Murmurs has wrongly accused me of writing well. The extent of her delusion is evident from the following thing she has written about me:

The Reluctant Writer
Abhinav is passion personified. Whenever I read his lovely writings, I sense his generosity of spirit, and a conviction that will never fail him. He's young, but (and I know this phrase has become trite) he truly is an old soul. He reminds me of the fact that we are all still students, sharing a common classroom.

Thanks a ton Sarah for making a wish come true so fast. I adore your writing and coming from you, this means the world to me.

Credit goes to Seamus Kearney of Shameless Words who instituted the award in the first place with the hope, nay the belief of fostering a network of bloggers who wish to make others' lives just that wee bit easier, profounder, and happier - who believe in the power of the written word atleast as much as they believe in themselves, if not more.

I think (???) that a writer ought to have the following in ample measure, for his own good self:

Doggedness:- The most important one. Without it, your imagination may wilt and all your talent may get you nowhere. It is the pluck you develop along the way that helps you to make sense of a rejection letter but still not give up. It is your ability to beat down a door once someone closes it in your face. It is your ability to pitch a murmur in a sea of noise. And it is the hallmark of every writer who has made a worthwhile place for himself in the hearts of his readers amidst a whirlpool of pages.

Tragedy:- Tragedy is the whiff that remains for a long time after the profound sense of loss that a work of art may inspire has passed away. A good writer revels in the glory of joy. But a great writer grieves in the gardens of melancholy. I do not intend to say that writers who do not celebrate tragedy are not at par with the ones who do. I'm just saying that they are missing the forest for the tree.

Love:- Don't write words that do not enamor you and make you fall in love with them. Don't create characters who don't come alive for you out of the pages of your manuscript or the posts of your blog. It is a sin to do so. If something doesn't inspire you, there are very little chances that others will like it. Your opinion and conviction in what you write has to be your own private benchmark.

Five of my favorite blogs in no particular order are:-

The Variegated Sky:- One of the most prolific blog writers, Aparna Kar got a book published out of her blog. Her posts are have this unsaid ability of being personal and universal at the same time. And sometimes she can be downright profound without dropping a hint. Her blog is a haven for some peaceful soul-searching and nostalgia. Appu, you deserve every bit of what you get.
Aloi Reads:- She is one crazy girl. A book fanatic. Her byline says it all - '…deep inside I’m still that first grader holed up in the library at lunchtime!'
Eating Poetry:- This is the place where prose is as forbidden as the prince in Rapunzel's tower. Go check it out for some stirring lyrical poetry.
Youth Curry:- Rashmi Bansal is the editor of the youth magazine JAM which we, college-going junta enjoy. She has a way with both ridicule and compassion, and she must have inspired many through her posts that force one to sit up and take notice.
Eat Almost Anything Atleast Once:- If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one is perhaps on the costlier side. A voyeur's delight, they take me to places I cannot dream of visiting in the near future. And they do so with a lot of journalistic aplomb.

That's all for now. The bloggers may collect their awards from The Shameless Lions Writing Circle. And don't forget to spread the goodwill!!!

Let It Be So...

2007-12-06T17:17:00.000+05:30

This long due post is my first entry for the December Writing Project at Cafe Writing.

If in the veil of my darkness, thy light takes refuge, let it be so...

If in the pieces of my heart, thy want of love takes refuge, let it be so...

If in my cold, dark nights of despair, thy light takes refuge let it be so...

If in my shriveled hands, the tears of thy plight take refuge, let it be so...

If in my half-lived life, the joy of thy birth takes refuge, let it be so...

If in the shackles of my traditions, thy flight of freedom takes refuge, let it be so...

My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk

2007-11-27T18:35:00.000+05:30

Title:- My Name Is Red

Genre:- Fiction
Subgenre:- Novel
Author:- Orhan Pamuk
Translator:- Erdağ M. Göknar
Publisher:- Random House
ISBN Number:- 0-375-70685-2
Price:- US $ 14.95/Canada $ 22.95/Rs. 220

The Blurb

At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of sixteenth-century Istanbul.

The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of his realm. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style. But because figurative art can be deemed an affront to Islam, this commission is a dangerous proposition indeed. And when one of the master miniaturists disappears, the only clue to the mystery lies in the half-finished illuminations themselves. Part fantasy and part philosophical puzzle, My Name Is Red is a kaleidoscopic journey into the introspection of art, religion, love, sex, and power.

The Review

Easily the most talked about book of 2007, ‘My Name Is Red’ by the turkish author Orhan Pamuk has been in the limelight for all sorts of reasons. It has had the honour of being the most critically acclaimed work of Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk, as well as suffered ignominy at the hands of Turkish fundamentalists, leading to the prosecution of Turkey’s most fearless and talented living novelist.

The novel recounts the story of four master miniaturists engaged at the royal atelier in the creation of a commemorative story in verse, the Book Of Festivities to mark the thousandth anniversary of the Hegira. Their work is to illustrate and embellish the book in the Venetian style making use of the techniques of perspective and idolatry, which were at the time deemed an affront to Islam. When one of the master miniaturists protests, he is found killed at the bottom of a well. The quest for the killer played against the backdrop of sixteenth-century Istanbul and the tragic courtship of Black, a miniaturist and Shekure, Enishte Effendi’s daughter make for a compelling read.

Like all great novels, the unraveling mystery becomes a metaphor for the unfolding of human spirit and conscience. However, what is most remarkable about Pamuk and what sets him apart from his coevals is the extent of scholarship and omniscience that he commands. It places him as a Turkish master in the cohorts of Dickens, Proust and Mann - arguably the greatest writers of English, French and German respectively. Incidentally, Mann himself won the Nobel in 1929 for The Motion Mountain.

Though the theme of the novel concentrates on the philosophical questions of the need and importance of style and signature in the arts of painting and illustration, Pamuk manages to lighten the mood by using the motifs of Nusret Hoja and the upcoming coffeehouse. The latter is depicted as the cynosure of all depravity where dervishes dance late into the night and blasphemous stories are retold in a bid to pollute people’s minds.

Each book has its moments, and this novel is no exception. Perhaps the most poignant moment is the one when Master Osman, the head miniaturist of the royal atelier, cloyed by the sight of the most perfect of all paintings in the royal treasury, blinds himself with the same plume needle that the master of masters Bihzad had once used to blind himself. Also Nizami’s tale of Husrev and Shirin has been evoked a countless number of times, and to good use.

Pamuk manages to concoct a wonderful fantasy hemmed by melancholy and tragedy in a way nobody has ever done before. It is ironic that Pamuk who secretly advocates the futility of style in the book has inadvertently ended up creating a very realistic, spartan and distinct style all his own.

Chokher Bali by Rabindranath Tagore

2007-11-27T18:00:00.000+05:30

Title:- Chokher Bali – A Grain Of Sand
Genre:- Fiction
Subgenre:- Novel
Author:- Rabindranath Tagore
Translator:- Sreejata Guha
Publisher:- Penguin Books
ISBN Number:- 0-14-303035-3
Price:- Rs. 250

The Blurb

Chokher Bali: A Grain Of Sand is Nobel Prize-winning author Rabindranath Tagore’s classic exposition of an extramarital affair that takes place within the confines of a joint family.

It is the story of the rich, flamboyant Mahendra and his simple, demure, beautiful wife Asha – a young couple who are befriended by the pragmatic Behari. Their cosy domestic scenario undergoes great upheaval with the introduction of the vivacious Binodini, a young, attractive widow who comes to live with them. Asha and Binodini become bosom pals. Binodini is initially drawn to Behari but then begins to respond to the advances of Mahendra, who has become obsessively attracted to her. After several twists and turns, Binodini elopes with Mahendra, leaving the entire family in turmoil.

On the one hand, Chokher Bali: A Grain Of Sand is a sensational account of two illicit relationships: Mahendra’s infatuation with Binodini which blkinds him to everything else, and Binodini’s secret passion for Behari of which she is never able to speak of. On the other hand, it is a complex tapestry woven by the emotional interplay between five finely etched characters: the impulsive Mahendra, his adoring mother Rajlakshmi, the frail and sensitive Asha, the strong, silent Behari, and the self-willed and irresistibly attractive Binodini.

A compelling portrayal of the complexity of relationships and of human character, this landmark novel is just as powerful and thought-provoking today as it was a hundred years ago, when it was written.

The Review

Published in 1903, Chokher Bali is claimed by many to be the first modern novel written in India. And its publication seems to be as coincidental as that of Gitanjali, the book of poems which won for India her first Nobel and for Tagore, international acclaim. Shrisha Chandra had restarted the magazine Bangadarshan and Tagore’s name had been added to the list of contributors. The latter took it upon himself to write a serialized novel for the magazine, his efforts resulting in the genesis of his first novel Chokher Bali. In the view of these circumstances, it is understandable why Tagore’s novel bears a strong resemblance in its subject to Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya’s Bishbriksha (The Poison Tree), the serialized novel which had earlier appeared in Bangadarshan and which was published in 1873. And indeed Tagore does make explicit references to Bishbriksha in Chokher Bali.

Chokher Bali is Binodini’s novel. Binodini – a young, beautiful and charming widow and the grain of sand in Asha’s eye. The novel revolves around Binodini, capturing her in all her avatars – as a hapless widow, as a gamine, as a seductress, and as a repentant woman. Tagore lends expression to her longings and fancies in immense detail, so much so that at some points the narrative becomes a tacit debate on love, longing, morality and relationships. And in doing so, he manages to make you fall in love with her.

Chokher Bali represents the literary equivalent of the place of miniature art in painting and illustration. The story by its plot itself is nothing to rave about – it might be better suited for scurrilous paperbacks that line the shelves of dusty bookshops and railway bookstalls. However Tagore manages to weave a beautiful variegated fabric out of threads of very few colours. His narrative retains a tension which does not lose you till the very end, due credit for which must go to the translator for understanding the ethos of such a simple and splendid novel.

One observes the conspicuous absence of judgement on the part of the author, which makes the turn of events and the whims and decisions of the characters as natural as the fluttering of leaves on a sweltering summer noon or the flow of a gushing river. The complexity of the narrative rests on the emotional turmoil suffusing it and not on the turns and twists of the plot (though there are many of those too). Also Chokher Bali is suffused with a spiritual aura which Tagore connoisseurs have learnt to recognize as the hallmark of Tagore’s writings.

Tagore’s novel is as simple and as complicated as only a true exposition of love can be. Go, rediscover love.

A Flaubert Gem!

2007-11-24T11:14:00.000+05:30

on s’y ennuit mais on y retourne … - Going to the Opera is like making love, we get bored but we come back...

- Gustave Flaubert

Coloured!!!

2007-11-18T16:16:00.000+05:30

The following poem written by an African kid was adjudged by UN as the best poem for the year 2006. Have a look.

When I born, I black.
When I grow up, I black.
When I go in Sun, I black.
When I scared, I black.
When I sick, I black.
And when I die, I still black.

And you white fellow,
When you born, you pink.
When you grow up, you white.
When you go in sun, you red.
When you cold, you blue.
When you scared, you yellow.
When you sick, you green.
And when you die, you gray.
And you calling me coloured?

Why I Need To Write?

2007-11-12T09:40:00.000+05:30

‘The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy,’ wrote Gustave Flaubert in a letter in 1858. Though I am not as great a skeptic as Flaubert, I can vouch for the fact that he knew what he was saying.

Well-chosen words can have an almost chimerical quality. They can bring to your face that dimpled smile, or have you in splits with their daggers of wit. They can make you wax nostalgic with ineffable emotions, or send you searching for the tissue paper with which to wipe your tears.

Early in life did I learn the magic that words can work, and I have been fortunate to have not forgotten its power through adolescence into adulthood.

I wish to write because no other thing excites me as much as words strung together beautifully like pearls on the thread of meaning. I wish to write so well that my reader cannot put me down even if he has his seat on a burning stove or a juggernaut hurtling towards him or a million other chores to do. Nothing less than this will do.

Often while reading a remarkably excellent novel or short-story or poetry, I have thanked the author for penning it and wondered when I will put my wits together to write as well as that. I hope that someday I break my shackles of indolence finally and get down to doing what I have always wanted to do and always known I’ll end up doing!

Exam Blues!!!

2007-11-07T13:46:00.000+05:30

So many things to write... I must do more than put in a comma in the morning and take it out in the evening.

Exams are less than a week away. And I'm left fumbling with pages and words and numbers making noise inside my empty head. I hope I make it through without much damage to the few creative neurons that I still have.

I feel sorry for turning down a friend's request to attend a talk at IITB. Especially when I haven't used the time well myself. I should have gone anyway. Sorry, Adi.

Nirmaan came out sometime back. People say its good but I haven't seen a copy yet. Dhruv did a good job of the cover page but I liked the one without the collage in the cubes better. I wish we had had a bit more of coordination as editors in helping shaping up the annual college mag. I also wish we get around to starting an unofficial college blog.

I don't know why I haven't been able to forget this incident. Mani and I had gone along to this Technical Paper Presentation at RGIT. They had invited a Canadian to judge the event. The bastard was so nonchalant and creepy! He probably didn't know a thing about Computer Science and just kept staring at girl's bare bellies much to their chagrin. In the end, the prize went to a presentation on anti-ageing that looked much more of an advertisement and we walked out feeling totally unrepentant.

Bye to blogs until after examtime.

The Rain-Song

2007-11-05T11:56:00.000+05:30

Like the hearts of seasoned wanderers
That know many sweet and sordid tales,
One seeks the arrival of rain-bearers -
Agog raconteurs asail upon fiery gales.

Like the silent mark of changing seasons,
Tiny beads of sweat course the land of skin.
Other heralds, alas, have learnt louder lessons;
A yellow-goggled cuckoo makes a noisy din.

Like a shadow across a day’s decline,
The rain-clouds creep across the land.
Old wizened winds hasten - a sure sign,
And rains and lightning - a sonorous band.

Like a dream heavy upon my eyes,
The sweet scent of the first rains rests.
On the ledge, the weary papiha cries,
And the cuckoo does sheer jests.

Like eyes that know tears more than sight,
The sky does not stop for a very long time.
Once and again, paper-boats pass in plight,
As a muddy rill flows and grows into its prime.

Like a heart that does not know its reasons,
That lives life as if living a passing treason,
Over the fetters of time, I watch the illusions
And the drops that bide their time this season.

Like languid monsoon nights of yore,
The strains of Des, Malkauns and Malhar
Open up the melodies of unwritten lore,
And seek the longing that lies afar.

Like too much pleasure that is pain,
The last notes dissolve into tears.
Over the breeze, lilts a dream again;
And the sweet song of sleep nears.

An Autumn Leaf And Other Things

2007-11-05T11:41:00.000+05:30

A withering leaf of pale autumn
Is a promise of mirthful spring,
As a prayer sweet and solemn
Does joyous occasion bring.

The wide, wile wings of dark
Bode the dawn of pristine light,
As a distressed lamp does mark
The end of a cruel, fearful night.

The seed that sees a flower wilt
Knows how to send a spur aloft.
The wick that watches wax melt
Seeks to spread a radiance soft.

A mighty river is a little brook
That must grow to reach the sea.
A star is time’s dream that took
Night’s dark deathly refuge to be.

Winds that speak to mountains
Murmur also to lesser leaves.
Rains that visit the brightest lanes
Also pour upon the humblest eaves.

Birds must come home to nest
After soaring the boundless sky.
All flesh must seek eternal rest
When the soul wishes to fly.

A Translated Ghazal

2007-11-05T11:35:00.000+05:30

In life does everyone’s love be;
Beyond death my dear,
I shall love thee…

To conjure separation!
That would be blasphemy,
Having stolen thee
From the lines of destiny.

In life does everyone’s love be;
Beyond death my dear,
I shall love thee...

Kabir In Translation

2007-11-05T11:34:00.000+05:30

No sooner will thee ingress my eyes, than I shall rest their guards;
That neither me to other minstrels, nor thee to other bards.

In this whirlwind of love, borne two trifles to greater heights;
When one meets the other, he in time’s opportunity delights.

‘Lo! Here the gardener comes,’ quiver buds by an anxious care;
Then pluck every gay flower, to adorn thy blackest hair.

So it is with water, it shuns the peaks and seeks the plains;
That the higher must thirst, and the lesser make draughty gains.

All that is done is your doing, my will hath no hand;
If my hand wills at all a deed, ‘tis your doing while I stand.

Aye fellow, feast on orts, and of cold waters drink;
And to the sight of others’ ledgers, do not fell think.

Naught in me is mine, aught is Thine;
To return Thee what is Thine is no loss of mine.

Content are all in this world, they eat and sleep;
Why then is Kabir awake, what malaise contrists so deep?

Raigarh For The Nightbirds

2007-10-15T10:58:00.000+05:30

It was on a whim that I agreed to my first trek.The place was Raigarh, the capital fort of Shivaji’s historic Deccan empire – one of the high forts he built to fend off Mughal invasions. It was here that he was crowned king in 1648 and breathed his last in 1680.

Raigarh is splendor cast in stone – a fascinating, self-sufficient township in its own right. According to Louise Nicholson’s ‘India Companion,’ Raigarh boasts of more than 300 stone structures in royal and public buildings alone. These include amongst others the royal court, a full-fledged marketplace, temples, dungeons, and cells.

Raigarh may appear deceptively stark and spartan, but that is because it does not reveal all its charms at once – they are scattered all over the pristine hills for you to discover.

We were five friends intent upon having a blast. It was decided, in order to add to the thrill, that we must start our trek in the dead of the night like nocturnal jaybirds.

After a particularly jerky ride on the most tortuous uphill path during which I held the handlebars of the jumbo rickshaw fast for the fear of being thrown out, we reached the foot of the fort, freezing in the cold that even the radiant moonlight could not dispel.

We began climbing the mammoth steps, about a hundred of which would lead us to the ramparts. Each of us had worn 2-3 sweaters and a monkeycap to keep warm in the numbing star-spangled night. We must have looked like apparitions rising up the hills in the intensely quiet summer night.

Trudging the tiring steps, we made time to banter and pull each other’s legs. We pointed out in the clear sky the glimmering constellations we could identify, and had a good laugh at lights twinkling faraway that looked like a still from a game of cricket.

To say that I was relieved when we were done with the uphill climb would be an euphemism. We hooted inside the dark imposing portal and heard our call carry through the thin country air.

Sitting on the width of the ramparts, we cracked jokes and indulged in nostalgia until the mist rose from the plains and engulfed us. The first to disappear were the cricket lights and the hills, then the bushy path which we had followed to reach the fort, and finally even my companions. The air was so full of stupor that I do not even remember when I fell asleep…

When I woke up, the mist had cleared and the scarlet sun was rising between two verdant hills. The adrenalin rush of the previous night had given way to a pounding headache. I tried to clear my head and stood up, looking forward to a full day of touring the nooks and crannies of the elusive Raigarh…