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Quotes From Here And There

Albert Einstein
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.
Dylan Thomas
I fell in love – that is the only expression I can think of – at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behavior very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy.
Eddie Cantor
It takes twenty years to become an overnight success.
Edward Abbey
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
e e cummings
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
Eyler Coates
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually produce a masterpiece. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Gustave Flaubert
The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.
Going to the Opera is like making love; we get bored but we come back.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If I love you, what business is it of yours?
John Steinbeck
Only through imitation do we develop toward originality.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.
Leonard Cohen
Ring the bells that still can ring;
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything;
That's how the light gets in.
Montaigne
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
Paul Sweeney
You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.
Peter Altenberg
I never dreamed of being Shakespeare or Goethe, and I never expected to hold the great mirror of truth up before the world; I dreamed only of being a little pocket mirror, the sort that a woman can carry in her purse; one that reflects small blemishes, and some great beauties, when held close enough to the heart.
Robert Frost
In three words, I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money.
Satchel Paige
Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.
Thomas Mann
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
V S Naipaul
The writer has only to listen very carefully and with a clear heart to what people say to him, and ask the next question, and the next.

My Personal Library


A Post About Plots And Stuff

Sunday, May 17, 2009 by Abhinav Maurya

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.)

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

Friday, May 8, 2009 by Abhinav Maurya

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!

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The Abyssinian Boy - Onyeka Nwelue

Thursday, December 11, 2008 by Abhinav Maurya

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

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

Sunday, December 7, 2008 by Abhinav Maurya

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.

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Let's Talk Haiku!

Sunday, November 30, 2008 by Abhinav Maurya

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

in

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




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.

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Now That There's Time To Read And Introspect

by Abhinav Maurya

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)

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Winner Of The First Australia-Asia Literary Award

Monday, November 24, 2008 by Abhinav Maurya

"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.

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Nadine Gordimer's Coming To Bombay!!!

Thursday, November 6, 2008 by Abhinav Maurya

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.

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Judith Hall Presents A Poem By Reetika Vazirani

Sunday, November 2, 2008 by Abhinav Maurya

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.

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Song Of The Little Road

Saturday, November 1, 2008 by Abhinav Maurya

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.

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