zigzackly

Jaipur Literature Festival

2011-12-30T06:45:00.002+05:30

Will you be there?

The history of Star Trek

2011-09-08T23:26:00.001+05:30

Source: SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

A third view on the Lok Pal bill (and may there be more!)

2011-08-22T20:35:00.007+05:30

This letter is reproduced here with Ms Roy's permission, and with the request to forward to friends. We need more debate, not just blind following.

Please also visit this page on the NCPRI site, which has a lot of related reading and additional matter.

Letter from Aruna Roy:

As a preface and a possible apology, let me say that this is a combination between a letter and a note. Please bear with the length of it. We write to you on a matter of mutual and common concern, the Lokpal bill, now in Parliament. The context of this letter is explained below.

When the Joint Drafting Committee of the Lokpal was working on the Jan Lokpal , the NCPRI had written to the Chair, Shri Pranab Mukherjee, and the co-chair Shri Shanti Bhushan, enquiring about the TORs and the process of and participation, in public consultation. Both assured us that there would be formal public consultation. It did not happen.

When the government bill went to cabinet with the intention of placing it in the monsoon session of parliament, the NCPRI decided to make its position known. The NCPRI is continuing with its deliberations and consultations and has prepared an approach paper and a set of principles for circulation. This is a work in progress.

The belief in consultations and discussion is the reason why we write to you.

The NCPRI’s (National Campaign for People’s Right to Information) involvement with legislation to deal with corruption and arbitrary use of power, began with the demand for an RTI law in 1996. The Lokpal was flagged as a law that needed to be taken up along with the Whistle Blowers Bill to address the killing of RTI activists and establish accountability. A committee was set up in the September 2010 for that purpose. The issue of the Lokpal was however taken up by some members of the NCPRI Working Committee, who formed the IAC and the NCPRI discussions remained suspended.

The Lokpal discussion has had an interesting trajectory. It began as the stated logical end of a large middle class mobilization on corruption. The stated end of that campaign was the demand for the setting up of a Joint Drafting Committee for a Lokpal bill. In common usage and understanding of corruption, the term casually refers to a range of corrupt practices. The political/governance spectrum is indeed more culpable than others. For it is mandated to maintain integrity in public life, to keep the country on keel with constitutional and other guarantees. This includes preventing the arbitrary use of power and corrupt practices. The Lokpal was too simplistically ordained by the campaign as a solution to all varieties of corrupt practices in our lives.

However the assurance that all solutions to the entire gamut of corrupt practices could be worked out through a strong Lokpal has left us with a great sense of disquiet. Not only because it does not address the arbitrary use of power. But because it is an unrealistic promise to rising expectations that it is an alleviation of all ills through one bill. It is also a question of the contents of the Jan Lokpal draft itself.

There have been public meetings but few consultations on the content of the Act in detail . While gestures and symbolic assent - like sms and referendums - may approve the intent, drafting of an Act needs more informed debate. The Lokpal debate has had its share of general platitudes, we need now to go beyond that. We also have to place the role of dissent squarely in the fulcrum of the debate. The discussions after all, flow from the acceptance that a strong Lokpal bill is needed. Also that the earlier and even the current government draft is faulty, even on principles.

The NCPRI however did make efforts before the 5th of April to arrive at a consensus with the IAC in a meeting held on 3rd April in the NMML. The NAC took up the matter independent of the NCPRI on the 4th April. The NCPRI had expressed reservations about the over arching and overwhelming structure of a law, which included grievances and corruption within its ambit. It was argued that though both are equally important, they require different mechanisms for implementation.

Subsequently events took over, and in the polarised discourse, it became impossible to make suggestions and or suggest changes. Every critique was attributed to wrong intent and viewed with suspicion and mistrust by the civil society members of the Joint Committee. Critique of the Bill has evoked sharp reactions, and statements have been made that no amendments or change to the principles or the framework is possible, and that disagreement with the draft was tantamount to promoting corruption. We were baffled by such statements. The NCPRI however continued with the consultations to evolve an approach, a set of principles and measures to unpack the huge unwieldy and much too powerful structure proposed by the IAC.

We are attaching a set of documents defining our approach to the Lokpal, different both from the Jan Lokpal and the Government bills. The NCPRI would like to share a set of principles and a framework for deliberation. The summary of our basic arguments is detailed below. This was placed in the public domain by the NCPRI and the Inclusive Media 4 Change ( CSDS) on the 5th and 6th of June 2011.

The consensus that emerged was that in place of a single institution there should be multiple institutions and that a basket of collective and concurrent Lokpal anti corruption and grievance redress measures should be evolved.

Summary of the NCPRI approach towards a series of concurrent and collective Anti-corruption and Grievance Redress measures:

Rationale: Vesting jurisdiction over the length and breadth of the government machinery in one institution will concentrate too much power in the institution, while the volume of work will make it difficult to carry out its tasks.

1. Unanimous endorsement of the need for accountability of all public servants, including the contentious issue of inclusion of the PM, with a few caveats. ( No one is above the law, enforcing the rule of law).

2. An independent system for judicial scrutiny and standards.

3. An independent and strong institution to scrutinize corruption of public servants and issues, which require different administrative processes and organizational set-up.

4. A mechanism to redress grievances of the common citizen.

5. Whistle Blowers protection.

The five measures proposed by NCPRI are:

1. Rashtriya Bhrashtachar Nivaran Lokpal (National Anti-corruption Lokpal): An institution to tackle corruption of all elected representatives, including the Prime Minister (with some safeguards), Ministers and Members of Parliament and senior bureaucrats (Group ‘A’officers) and all other co-accused including those in the private and social sector. The Lokpal will be financially and administratively independent from the government and will have both investigative and prosecution powers.

2. Kendriya Satarkta Lokpal (Central Vigilance Commission): Amending the Central Vigilance Commission Act to remove the single directive and empower the CVC to investigate corruption and take appropriate action against mid-level bureaucracy.

3. Nyayapalika Lokpal (Judicial Standards and Accountability Lokpal): To strengthen the existing Judicial Accountability and Standards Bill, that is currently before the Parliament, to ensure that the judiciary is also made effectively and appropriately accountable, without compromising its independence from the executive or the integrity of its functions.

4. Shikayat Nivaran Lokpal (Public Grievances Lokpal): To set up an effective time-bound system for grievance redress for common citizens to make the government answerable in terms of its functions, duties, commitments and obligations towards citizens. The grievance redress structure would have decentralized institutional mechanisms going right down to each ward/block level, and would ensure a bottom-up, people centric approach so that complaints and grievances can be dealt with speedily and in a decentralized, participatory and transparent manner. It will integrate public vigilance processes like vigilance committees and social audits, and provide for facilitation for the filing of all grievances/complaints through the setting up of block information and facilitation centres in every Block (rural) and ward(urban) in the country.The grievance redress mechanism will be a three-tier structure consisting of grievance redress officers at the local level within the department, independent district level grievance redressal authorities and central/State level grievance redress commission. It will include and rationalize existing
structures.

5. Lokrakshak Kanoon (Whistleblower Protection Lokpal): To strengthen the existing Public interest Disclosure and Protection to Persons Making the Disclosure Bill, that is currently before the Parliament, to ensure appropriate protection of whistleblowers.

These institutions, where relevant, will also be established at the State level. In addition there will be a common selection process to staff these institutions. We feel that all these measures need to be brought in simultaneously to effectively tackle corruption at all levels and provide a mechanism to redress grievances of citizens.

We write to you, to present this alternative, to elicit your responses, and to invite you to be part of the discourse. Please do let us know whether you are interested in being part of the discourse and in receiving periodic updates.

Please forward this on to friends and other interested people.

We look forward to your reply.

Warm regards,

Aruna Roy
MKSS (Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan)
Village Devdungri, Post Barar
District Rajsamand 313341
Rajasthan

(email us at views.lokpal@gmail.com)

Rs 0.02

2011-08-17T17:18:00.000+05:30

1. I'm anti-corruption.
2. I'm anti-Anna Hazare.
3. Hazare is a sanctimonious right-wing tyrant so cloaked in his own virtue that he believes he is above the law.
4. The law is frequently an ass.
5. Nevertheless, the law is frequently our only hope.
6. Better the elected asses than the dictatorial unelected.
7. The government is playing into Hazare's hands with its idiocy.
8. Yes, these views can be held simultaneously.

Great-Grandson of Godawful Poetry Fortnight

2011-08-08T22:48:00.004+05:30

We launched the first Godawful Poetry Fortnight in 2008, and followed up in in 2009 and 2010. All our posts are here, and there's a brief article in the TOI about the Fortnight here.

Now, time to gear up for 2011. You have been warned!

The essentials:

• Godawful Poetry Fortnight runs from the 19th to the 31st August.

• Our Patron Saint is William Wordsworth.

And he gets this signal honour for saying that poetry "is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." Way too many aspiring poets have rallied behind that banner, too few going so far as recollecting those emotions in tranquillity, let alone reading the rest of the preface to Lyrical Ballads (which can be found on Bartleby, for those interested).

• To join in, all you have to do is post on your blog*, Facebook or Google+ a godawful poem you have written, with—all totally optional—a brief note about GPF, a bit about what godawful poetry means to you, and a link to this post.

• Post godawful poems as often as you like during the Fortnight. (The True Believers Challenge: post thirteen godawful poems, one on each day of the Fortnight.) Squeeze your muse like a boil. Get it all out. Pester your friends to post too. Once GPF is done, you will write good poetry for the rest of the year, yes?

• Technorati is pretty much dead now. So just use a Godawful Poetry Fortnight tag or label on your post, and maybe a #GodawfulPoetryFortnight Twitter hashtag as well.

• To those who feel the need to point out this Fortnight lasts only thirteen days, we draw our cape around us, and say, in a marked manner, "Poetic license."

* I'd be happy to link to you if you tell me where your poem is.
If you don't have a blog, you're welcome to use the comment space here or, if you know me and have my address, email me your poems and I'll post them as guest posts.

Jhunjhunwala was too busy to go to the Situation(al Comedy) Room

2011-05-07T16:19:00.003+05:30

Bappi Goes To The Situation Room

2011-05-07T04:35:00.004+05:30

For Samit.

Chennai Reporters' Beat

2011-04-10T01:38:00.002+05:30

Yo, Madrasis (it's okay to say 'Madrasis' for just people from the city, no?),

The noble Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan (have always loved the regal way his name rolls off the tongue) has an experiment to propose, one that we're eager to see the results of. It's happening in a few hours.

Excerpts from his post:

On Sunday, the 10th of April, we will all meet at the Luz Signal (near the Sangeetha restaurant), and proceed in a stochastic and haphazard manner towards TT K Road/Sivaswami Road. Along the way you, and I, will meet people, talk to those we meet and keep a keen eye out for all kinds of things. At the end of the walk, we will talk for a few minutes about the things we saw, and coffee/breakfast/brunch later, disperse.
...
you will sit down and write about whatever you think is worth writing about from the walk.
...
I (and perhaps one other person) will then collate these stories, edit them (minimally, and brutally honestly) and structure them into a paper we’d love to spend a Sunday with. A month of Sundays with.
All of this, then, will be published as an entirely online newspaper; due credit given, of course.

Details here.

Change a letter, change the story

2011-03-27T04:38:00.005+05:30

These, reformatted and with typos (hopefully) corrected, are from a Twitter hashtag we started in the wee hours, #changealetterchangethestory, which in turn was ripped off from a couple of old posts on this blog (1, 2 and you'll see that my first few were from my own contributions there), which in turn were inspired by an email thread. Please add more!

And check out the thread, scrolling back to the beginning, before it became a sort of minor viral. We particularly recommend contributions by @tinytoots, @ravages, @leftarmspinster and @rajasen (who are cordially invited to repost their selections here or on Facebook, where this will eventually cross-post).

The basic rules: (a) add a letter, subtract a letter, or change a letter, (b) provide a blurb and (c) if (b) is funny enough, you may be permitted to bend (a) slightly.

Jurassic Pork
Stars Miss Piggy. Kermit guests as amphibian with a taste for the Other White Meat.

Bone With The Wind
Rhett decides he doesn’t give a damn and follows his libido.

The Princess Ride
Another set of Princess Di revelations. The butler did it, apparently.

A Suitable Toy
The search for the perfect self-gratification aid

Vernon Dog Little
Dyslexic boy framed for incident in the city pound.

A Stud in Scarlet
Holmes helps a metrosexual accused of a crime of fashion.

The Complete Woks of Shakespeare
The man who introduced Chinese cooking to Elizabethan England.

The Dairy of Samuel Pepys
How one man milked success for all it was worth

Of Human Bandage
Florence Nightingale's rip-roaring autobiography

Finnegan's Cake
Buttery, over-cooked

Beautiful Thong
@soniafaleiro's lyrical real-life story of Fashion Week

Sin Fish
@chakraview's coming of age story, set in an aquarium

Heaver Lake
Vikram Seth's beautiful collection of poetry on throwing up

Nine Hives
William Dalrymple's ode to bee-keeping

Known Smurf
@anniezaidi 's debut novel about her childhood's favourite toy (yeah, okay, that was 2 letters)

Homage to Catatonia
The pro-LSD manifesto

Popcore Essayists
@jaiarjun edits set of learned essays on incestuous pornography

The Grill
@soniafaleiro on the art of barbecuing

My Fiend Sancho
@amitvarma's experiments with devil worship

My Experiments With The Troth
MKG's story of his marriage

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Umpire
@prempanicker's argument for neutral match officials

Mound of the Baskervilles
A pictorial study of the gravestones of Yorkshire

Of Rice and Men
How to ensnare a Tamizh groom

To Fill a Mockingbird
A guide to the bird-feeders of Alabama

The World According to Carp
Scientific study of the migration habits of this popular fish

Fear and Loafing in Las Vegas
The flaneur's guide to sin city

Match 22
Elizabeth Taylor's marriages

Midflight's Children
The progeny of the Mile-High Club (one more cheat - 2 letters changed)

The Unbearable Lightness of Peeing
Blessed relief

Sods and Lovers
The Hemingway you never knew

The Girl With The Dragon Tatti
Creative defecation

The Girl Who Flayed With Fire
S&M, pyromania; it's all there

The Grate Indian Novel
Slightly irritating IWE work

The Sly Company Of People Who Caress
Love for sale, surreptitiously

India Balling
An NYT reporter takes a gap year in India

Trainspitting
Why the railway tracks turned red

Shtupping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Frost's raunchier side

Love and Ponging in Bombay
How a deodarant salesman found romance in the city's trains

Malgudi Pays
RKN's guide to budding IWE writers

Sacred Dames
The BJP's sadhvis - an insiders account

Groom on the Roof
Finding love in the hills

In An Antique Band
Life on the road with The Rolling Stones

Maxiumum Pity
When Mother Teresa opened a branch office in Bombay

2 Statues
Best-selling Indian novel with wooden characters

Lunatic in my mead
The mad bootlegger of Bangalore

The Hungry Diet
Amitav Ghosh's patented, guaranteed weight loss manual

The Mother Side of Midnight
Oedipus revisited

Supperman
The sad story of an overweight superhero

The Kite Punner
Who strangled him with the manja?

A Hose for Mr Biswas
Naipaul's epic work on suburban gardening

What Ho, Jeeves
Bertie can;t remember who he was with last night (well, okay, no letters changed)

The 3 Mistakes of My Wife
How his spouse said 'I do, I do, I do'

The Singh And I
@bhogleharsha on how to keep smiling in the commentary box

Spittle Women
The first compartment of the 8.20 Churchgate fast

Withering Heights
Collected criticism

Sex and the Pity
How the losers get laid

The Twin Showers
The Ashleigh and Mary-Kate voyeur tapes

Park Night
Bruce Wayne cruises the Oval, looking for a little Robin

Lady Chatterly's Lever
Give me a place to stand and I'll make the earth move for you, baby

It Takes A Pillage
The USA's war on Countries Which Won't Give Them Oil

Who Filled Roger Rabbit?
A taxidermist's tale of woe

The Audacity of Grope
Another president's memoir

The Audacity of Dope
How an idiot became President

The Wind in the Pillows
Why she had to change the bedclothes

The Call of the Mild
Indian engineers move to the USA

Caturday Night Fever
The LOLCATS collection

Pilates of the Caribbean
Weight Loss in the West Indies

Dork Knight
@sidin's secret fantasies

Caferati's Fifth Annual Poetry Slam at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival

2011-02-07T02:02:00.002+05:30

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj (formerly Prince of Wales) museum garden
Sunday, 13th February, 2011
7.00 pm.

Caferati's Annual Poetry Slam made its debut at Kala Ghoda in 2007 (the first in India, actually) and has returned every year since then, to much enjoyment from its faithful audience and participants. This is its fifth edition.

Themes

There are no required themes. (Since it's the eve of St Valentine's Day, we suggest you bring at least one love poem.)

We’re proponents of free speech, but please understand (1) that we must abide by the laws of the land, and (2) that there may be children present in the audience. Please don’t bring poems that could get the Festival in trouble with the law.

Deadlines

For initial submission via email:
11.49 p.m., 11th February, 2011. (We may extend this deadline, but don’t count on it.)
To respond to the invitation to the Slam:
10 a.m., 13 February, 2011.
On the day of the Slam, 13th February 2011:
Report to the sound console at the venue by 6.00 p.m, and ask to speak to one of the Literature volunteers. Please show all five of your poems to the volunteers.

How our Poetry Slam works
Even if you know how a conventional Slam works, please read this section. There are more than a few tweaks.

Before the Slam:

Each poet must have ready at least five poems.

To be invited to compete in the Slam, you must submit one poem via email. (See address at the bottom of this post.)

The organisers/judges will short-list poets from the entries. Selection criteria will be the quality of the writing and how well, in the judges’ opinion, those poems lend themselves to performance.

The selected poets will be informed of their selection only via email. Their participation will be confirmed only once they reply to that email and confirm that that will be able to perform at the Slam and that they will come prepared to perform five of their poems.

At the event:

Participants in each round will perform in random order.

After each round, the judges will vote, and the competitors with the lowest points in that round will be eliminated, until we have a winner. The exact number that will be eliminated in each round will be decided depending on the number of participants selected to compete in the Slam, and will be announced before the performances start.

Scoring will be cumulative. Those who survive each round will carry their points with them. Elimination in each round will be based on total scores up to that point. In case of a tie, the totals from that specific round will be used as a tie-breaker.

Rules and Conditions

Submit only one poem via email.

The contest is open to anyone over the age of 16, except families of the organisers and the judges. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been published or not, whether you’ve performed before or not.

Since the main event is live on stage, selected participants must be prepared to travel to the venue (at their own expense), from wherever they are, to perform their work.

Entries must be your own, original work.

Entries can be in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and English

Each poem must take no longer than two minutes to perform. Time on stage will be kept strictly, and you will be cut off if you exceed the limit.

Participants selected for the Slam can, on stage, read from a written version, recite from memory, declaim, shout, or sing their words. They can stand still, gesture, pace, jump and up and down, stand on their heads, whatever. They will be judged on both the quality of the words they perform and the performance itself.

No costumes, musical accompaniment, or audio visual aids allowed. It's just you and your voice

There is no entry fee.

Submissions remain the intellectual property of the entrants, but by submitting an entry, you give the the Kala Ghoda Association, the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival and its Sponsors, and Caferati permission to use your entry, with acknowledgement, but with no payment to you, in their websites, as part of Press Releases (where they may be reproduced by media organisations), and in a possible special booklet or CD featuring the best of the Festival.

The decisions of the jury are final and binding, and no correspondence will be entertained regarding the jury’s decisions.

Judges

Caferati’s editors will evaluate initial submissions.

On the event day, there will be a panel of 6 judges.

The expert panel:

(to be announced)

The Audience Panel:

Three randomly chosen members of the audience will join the experts to help judge each round.

Prizes

Prizes worth approximately Rs 3000 (first place), Rs 2000 (second place, and Rs 1000 (third place).

Winners will be announced at the end of the contest.

How to enter

Email editors AT caferati DOT com with the subject line Kala Ghoda Poetry Slam 2011.

Please include:
Your name
Your age
Your telephone number (preferably a cellphone you carry at all times)

The Essential Indian Books survey / the Readership survey

2011-02-06T07:49:00.010+05:30

Would much appreciate it if you could post links to these on your blog. I'm trying to get at least a few thousand responses, and a link from you would help big time.

If you prefer to Tweet, you can use http://bit.ly/EssentialIndianBooks and http://bit.ly/readershipsurvey

Click here to go to the surveys.

Essential Indian Books

Informal Readership Survey

Or you can take them on this page, below.

Do please pass the URLs on to friends as well. The more people we get to fill this out the better the results will be.

Many thanks!

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If you're seeing this message for more than a few seconds, you may be viewing this post on a feedreader, or a place like Facebook, where embedded objects aren't displayed. Please click through to the original post to take the survey.

ForbesLife India - an e-sampler

2011-01-30T18:58:00.002+05:30

Open publication - Free publishing

Please also read a short introduction by Indrajit Gupta, editor, Forbes India, and the introduction to ForbesLife India by Charles Assisi, editor.

If you'd like to subscribe, please see this page for details.

We hope you'll pick up your copy soon, and we look forward to your feedback. You can write to us at ForbesLifeIndia AT network18online.com, follow us on Twitter or 'Like' us on Facebook.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a..

2010-12-31T18:57:00.008+05:30

..plagiarism accusation!

(Note: please see the update at the end of this post.)(Update 2)

Background and disclosure: I work for Forbes India, where I handle a section of the magazine. Also in my portfolio is the fancy-pants new-age designation, "Editor, Social Media." Which means that I handle the magazine's social media presence: our LinkedIn group, our page on Facebook, and our Twitter handle. And I'm part of the team that creates our covers.

But.

Everything I say below this is my own opinion, and should not be construed as being official communication from Forbes India or it editors and stakeholders. My own personal opinion. Not official. Clear? Thank you.

Today, I got a few alerts from friends that someone called @acorn had said, on Twitter, that the latest Forbes India cover was ripped off from another magazine. Here's the tweet: Forbes India Dec 2010 cover http://j.mp/i7dqXs plagiarises from Pragati Oct 2010 cover http://j.mp/e6BL09.

This made me grumpy. Make that more grumpy. We're handling regular issues of the magazine, plus a new project that we launch in a bit, and it already looked like I'd have no time to do more than raise a glass with friends to bring in the new year before getting back to work. Now I'd have to go find out who this acorn is and what they were wittering on about.

So, acorn is the Twitter ID of Nitin Pai, who identifies himself as the editor of Pragati, The Indian National Interest Review, from The Takshashila Institution. Now that 'national interest' bit rang a bell. It sounded like a name I'd heard and dismissed from my mind a long time ago. (Dismissed on the admittedly arbitrary grounds that it sounded to me like a rip-off of The National Interest, a US-based foreign policy magazine, and people who can't even think up an original name aren't worth paying too much attention to.) Later, smart pals like Amit Varma linking to The National Interest from time to time persuaded me to check it out a few times. But then I found nothing of particular interest to me in what they had to say, so the blog vanished from my mind. Until now, when I learn that it also has a magazine.

And so, to the plagiarism bit. Mr Pai is saying that we stole their original creative idea. That is a very serious accusation, the kind that lawyers make lots of money on. And one that I, as someone who has made a living out of creating original work, take very seriously.

Let's see now. This 'magazine' did a cover in October, in which a muscular man clad in a kurta, waistcoat and Gandhi cap is shown opening up the buttons of the first two items of clothing, to reveal that he is wearing a blue undershirt on which, within a diamond shape, you see the Ashoka Chakra. The headline says, "Time for change."

(Quick aside. Ye learned ones: Doesn't this flout the Flag Code of India, 2002? It says, among other things, "the Flag shall not be used as a portion of costume or uniform of any description nor shall it be embroidered or printed upon cushions, handkerchiefs, napkins or any dress material." Or are parts of the flag exempt?)

Forbes India's year-end issue cover has a muscular man opening up his sherwani to show that he is wearing a blue undershirt on which is emblazoned a red and yellow diamond shape, within which you see the words "Person of the year 2010." The copy says, "Smarter, bolder, stronger, braver, tougher, bigger, wiser. Better. The Best of the Year."

So, if Forbes India is guilty of plagiarism, it must mean that this person that Pragati portrays is an original creation of their...think tank. Let's see now. Have we seen a similar visual somewhere? No, that can't be true. They wouldn't put a fictional American comic book character on their cover in a pose that large numbers of people around the world would recognise instantly , make a few cosmetic changes, and then claim that it is an original concept. So that must mean this is a totally original thought. (But then, one doesn't get the symbolism of this gentleman taking off his traditional Indian clothing to show us his underwear. Maybe they meant Time to Change. You know, "change your underwear, kiddies," that kind of thing. Good lad. Not sure what the point, but I'm all for hygiene.)

We, in the Forbes India team, are pretty clear where we got our inspiration from. None of us had heard of Pragati before today (and, between us, we do read pretty widely). We were paying homage to a hero of our misspent youths. Who was faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Who would zip into phone booths and rip off his street clothes and spectacles to reveal his superhero costume underneath.

Fabulously original? No. We were paying homage to an iconic image, the mild-mannered reporter turning into the Man of Steel. The cover sought simply to convey that our person of the year was, in a way, a super human. Simple enough.

(I'll admit that I don't think it's as good as some of our previous covers. But we have, more than once, played with old tropes to deliver a thought. This recent cover, for instance, paid homage to a classic VW campaign. Inside joke: VW is now the world's largest car-maker; we took delight in twisting VW's original approach, created by the famous Mr Bernbach and his team, to show what we thought Toyota was trying to do. And this cover was a take on a concept that has had many avatars on the Web, but was originally done by The New Yorker (see this image for a reference) back in 1976. More recently, The Economist did a similar cover, about China's world view.)

Still, Mr Pai says we're plagiarists. And Mr Pai is, undoubtedly, an honourable man. So I guess I'll see their lawyers, or communication from them, in the office soon.

Or, perhaps, *gasp* Mr Pai is trying to get some much-needed visibility for his little magazine by making accusation about Forbes India.

Could it be, could it be, could it be?

Naah. Perish the uncharitable thought. Not from a high-minded organisation that aims to be "credible." That unambiguously pursues the national interest "through consistent high-quality policy advisories." They wouldn't do that.

So, perhaps, I should ask my bosses to get the company's lawyers to speak to Mr Pai about slander. What say ye, Gentle Reader?

*Update

This evening, I wrote to Nitin Pai. I'm extracting a part of my first email to him.

My relating Pragati's size to the matter was immature, and what is worse, ungentlemanly and irrelevant. I apologise for that, without conditions and without reservations.

(This apology is in my personal capacity, as was my blog post. Like my blog post, it does not have the sanction or approval of my bosses and Forbes India.)

This still stands: Your accusation of plagiarism is completely unjustified. I am, to put it mildly, upset about that, and do not apologise for my conclusions on why you made that accusation

Nitin replied to my email promptly and courteously. We have since exchanged a number of very civil emails and while we haven't agreed on everything, we are finding common ground. Nitin's emails to me are personal, and therefore privileged, and it's up to him to decide what he wants to share of their content.

8Update 2

Nitin Pai had told me why he jumped to the conclusion that Forbes India had ripped off his cover: he knew that a Pragati designer had shown work (but not the cover in question) to someone at Forbes India. I agreed with him that I would very likely have come to the same conclusion under the circumstances. (While I disagree with his tweeting his outraged conclusion rather than contacting us, I have to admit that I might well have done the same.) He asked me to check with our design team. I did, and wrote back to him thus:

I checked with the three people involved with the cover, and all three assured me that they had no knowledge of Pragati. The only Pragati they'd heard of as an entity is the very famous printing press in Hyderabad. I did an extra check with the remainder of the team, just to make sure, and got similar answers.
My design chief says he has seen over 50 portfolios in the last two months (we've been looking rather intensively for a couple of designers), and yes, it is possible that he may have seen the name Pragati in portfolios that he has seen, but has no recollection of it.
I can do no more than offer you our collective word on this. I hope it is enough?

I know that in a situation like this, with hurt professional pride and anger welling up — like this post of mine, for example — it would be easy to dismiss this assurance. Mr Pai has been a gentleman and has taken my word for it. He has since tweeted an apology and an explanation — 1, 2, 3 — and updated his post.

I'm glad we were able to resolve this despite the acrimonious start.

Thank you, Nitin, and good luck to Pragati. Here's to more and better from all of us.

Amen.

In Madras

2010-12-20T03:52:00.006+05:30

We were in Madras for a few days (as part of the Poetry With Prakriti festival). Though we've visited the city a few times as an adult, this was the the first time since we were twelve or thereabouts that we saw a bit of the place. We lived there between ages six and nine, and a lot of what we remember had had changed, of course.

These are brief notes on the trip.

• No road seems to meet another at right angles: they merge, curving into each other at acute angles, undulating, flowing around obstructions, never seeming to come to a full stop.

• On the streets, near-misses that would have resulted in fist-fights in Bombay or Delhi are dismissed with a shrug, or in the case of the driver of the vehicle that ferried us around, a giggle.

• Vehicles obey signals at 2 a.m. but ignore them during rush hour.
The right side of the road on a two-way street is merely a suggestion, not to be taken seriously.

• Driving in Madras is as distinct a genre of the art as driving in Bombay, or Delhi. Practitioners of each would look down on the others.

• Did we say Madras has no straight roads? Madras has no straight roads. What it does have is a profusion of one-way streets.

• The city wakes up earlier and goes to be earlier than other metros; things like late breakfasts and dinners are regarded with some suspicion.

• A service apartment is not what you think it is. The one I stayed in had beds, electricity, an AC and a small water heater (more than we expected or needed), but no soap or towel, no heating jug, one plastic chair, no hangers in the closet, no storage one could lock, no room cleaning (all of which we could have used).

• On our previous brief visits, we noticed that coffee house franchises weren't as ubiquitous (except for the now defunct Qwiky's) as in other Indian cities. Figures, we said to ourselves: they take their coffee seriously, Tamil folks. This time, we were surprised to see Baristas and Cafe Coffee Days abound.

• In Madras, you understand what sambhar really should be.
And that dosas are not just for vegetarians. Our first meal was egg dosa with chicken curry in a place called Midnight Masala, which was, apparently, the only non-5-star eating option open at 1.30 a.m., when our flight landed.

• When people say they'd like to meet up, they make the effort to do so.

• And, at an event, if you have a low turn-out, it's no point waiting for late-comers; everyone who wants to be there will be there, on time.

• Low-slung, sprawling, set-back-from-the-road type houses still survive, though newer parts of town have their profusion of ugly concrete boxes And in the business districts, glass-walled skyscrapers are sprouting, which seems like a bad idea in a city that is infernally hot most of the year!

• And on Mount Road, we were delighted to see that Indo-Saracenic frontages still survive. We in Bombay are used to Victoria Terminus being used as the ultimate example of the genre. Chandrachoodan tells us that that isn't correct: for one, the school really first took shape in Madras; and VT has a big helping of Gothic in the mix.

• British-era place-names still survive, not just in everyday conversation; they're also there on street signage.

• No one picks on you if you say 'Madras' instead of 'Chennai.'

• Contrary to popular belief, Madras has a winter. And the winter rain is a wondrous thing: a fine spray that keeps dust and the temperature down.

• The only Hindi you hear is from North Indians in restaurants trying to to talk to waiters.

• In Madras, I have an accent.

• They take their movies stars seriously.

• Life does move slower; and there are more courtesies and rituals. A friend says an Open Mic with a time limit for performers, like the one we run in Prithvi, would not work. People would expect to be able to finish their poems no matter how long they last. Remember, she said, this is a place where the alaap of a performance can take an hour.

• And yes, we fell in live with Amethyst (which, we hear, is moving soon, and the lovely mansion in which it is housed may be demolished). Fab food, great ambience, and of course, a beautiful place.

Wethinks we will write about Poetry With Prakriti separately. Soon.

Stet 'Stet'

2010-11-04T03:17:00.007+05:30

'Stet' is Latin for 'let it stand.' In publishing, when an editor, writer or proofreader uses it on a copy sheet, it refers to a change already marked, and instructs those reading the copy to disregard or discard that marked change.

It also is the name of the blog (tagline: "life, unedited"), that Mitali Saran uses to archive her popular Business Standard column of the same name. Make that her erstwhile column.

Because, you see, she is no longer writing it. It happened because:

This week, for the first time since its inception in August 2006, Stet was not published in Business Standard's weekend edition (October 30, 2010) . You'll find the likely reason for that in the second-last paragraph of the spiked column, reproduced below.

And a later update:

Business Standard's view that the post below was too dated to run is utterly unpersuasive, and I'm afraid I don't believe it. They also say that since this post was put up on the blog, along with comments about BS, the question of carrying it in the paper does not arise. We shall have to agree to disagree on this whole thing, and I will write a post about that in a few days; but meanwhile, I have terminated my arrangement with them with immediate effect. As of this week, Stet will no longer appear in Business Standard.

The column in question, incidentally, is about the product of Aroon Purie's jet lag, and you can read it in the post on Stet (the blog) where Mitali also posted the extracts above. (You should also read the comments on that post.)

**

And while on the subject of jet lag, here's Mitali's poem on the topic, also from the column (but the link is to her blog.)

**

(Some more links to the tiger-nado incident. Nilanjana, Sridala, and via both of them, Abinandanan, Niranjana Iyer (who says that India Today has ripped her stuff off in the past), Rahul Siddharthan, and NITK Numbskulls Page.)

O tempora! O mores!

2010-11-01T02:04:00.003+05:30

Got this as a tip-off for a writers' listings newsletter I run (Caferati Listings, here and here).

Here's the key bit (the whole thing is here.):

Since the magazines caters to luxury and life style readers, a lot of brands would rather have us create something in the Vogue/GQ/Conde Nast Traveller style for their brand than simply placing an ad, because no one in India understands this set of Audience better than we do. The advertorials follow the editorial style to ensure that the promotional article looks like an editorial point of view and not a paid promotion.

They're actually proudly proclaiming that they will help their advertisers make their ads look like editorial.

Does this look like a publishing scam to you?

2010-10-18T04:13:00.001+05:30

This refers to this listing, and this one, both on Caferati Listings (free sign-up needed to view).

Via our friend, the novelist Venita Coelho, we learn that things are not quite what they seem at Cedar Books. I'm pasting in a letter Venita forwarded to me, with the name of the writer to whom it was sent removed.

From: publicrelation@pustakmahal.com
To: _____
Subject: Re: submission
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:17:57 -0700
Dear _____,

We are glad to inform you that we are ready to publish your novel provided you agree with our certain terms and conditions.

Following are some of the terms which you will be required to agree before we take things forward. A detailed contract will be send to you once you agree with these terms.

1. Considering the word count, we will keep the price of your book at Rs 175.

2. You have to buy back 300 copies of the book at a discount of 25%.

3. You have to make one time payment either through DD or Cheque along with the signed copy of the agreement which we will send, after you agree with these conditions.

4. An additional Rs 5000 will be charged if we design the cover for you and if you chose to design your own cover then for the final designing part we will be charging Rs 2000.

5. As we promote our books through various digital mediums we charge Rs 3000 for that.

6. And lastly you will get a 4.8 % royalty on the cover price for each book.

Hope you find these terms suitable.

Do acknowledge the receipt of this mail along with your response. Please feel free to mail your queries, if any.

Regards

Divya

www.pustakmahal.com

pustakmahaldelhi.blogspot.com

What this means is that to publish this author, Pustak Mahal would charge her/him Rs 39,375 (75% of the cost of 300 copies s/he would be forced to buy) + Rs 2,000 as a design fee even if s/he designed her own cover (Rs 5,000 of she wanted PM to design a cover) + Rs 3,000 for promotions. That's Rs 44,375 (Rs 47,375 if PM did the cover).

I'm not sure of current prices, but it looks like the author would be paying Pustak Mahal / Cedar Books enough to totally cover the cost of printing, with a handsome profit left over. Note that Pustak Mahal / Cedar Books has no obligation to actually print any more than the 300 copies that the author must buy. Even if they did, the author would get a piddly 4.8% royalty on any sales, despite financing the entire operation.

Sounds like rather more than the 'benign scam' of the poetry.com type of website. There, at least, you can choose to buy only one copy of the book, even if at a high price.

If you know of similar publishers elsewhere, do please tell us about it in the comments.

(cross-posted)

10-10-10 10:10:10 – 10-10-10 10:10:10

2010-10-10T10:10:00.001+05:30

By the powers vested in my by, erm, myself, I hereby declare that on the tenth October, 2010, at ten minutes and ten seconds past ten a.m., it will be Pink Panther Day. The Day will end at ten minutes and ten seconds past ten p.m.

p.s.

Via Manjula, we learn that we can also say:

Happy Douglas Adams Day!
Douglas Adams fans would know that 42 is the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, calculated in 7.5 million years by a supercomputer named Deep Thought. Today is the 10th day of the 10th month of the year, and if Y2K never happened, this year would be ’10. In binary notation, 101010 is 42 in base 10. Today’s the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything! Happy Douglas Adams Day!

Much joy!

p.p.s.

Megha wished us a happy tennitus day (we feel the buzz).

And her dad declared it Filmi Drama Day.

Rather a full schedule, what?

Grandson of Godawful Poetry Fortnight - 19th to 31st August

2010-08-19T20:26:00.004+05:30

Godawful Poetry Fortnight made its, erm debut in 2008 and came back in 2009.

And now it's time for the the third in the series. Hopefully, like all sequels, it will be even worse.

To reprise, the essentials:

• Godawful Poetry Fortnight runs from the 19th to the 31st August.

• Our Patron Saint is William Wordsworth.

And he gets this signal honour for saying that poetry "is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." Way too many aspiring poets have rallied behind that banner, too few going so far as recollecting those emotions in tranquillity, let alone reading the rest of the preface to Lyrical Ballads (which can be found on Bartleby, for those interested).

• To join in, all you have to do is post on your blog* a godawful poem you have written, with—all totally optional—a brief note about GPF, a bit about what godawful poetry means to you, and a link to this post.

• Post godawful poems as often as you like during the Fortnight.
•• The True Believers Challenge: Post thirteen godawful poems, one on each day of the Fortnight.)
Squeeze your muse like a boil. Get it all out. Pester your friends to post too. Once GPF is done, you will write good poetry for the rest of the year, yes?

• Please use this Technorati tag on your post: Godawful Poetry Fortnight. Here's the HTML for the tag: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Godawful+Poetry+Fortnight" rel="tag">Godawful Poetry Fortnight</a>

• To those who feel the need to point out this Fortnight lasts only thirteen days, we draw our cape around us, and say, in a marked manner, "Poetic license."

* I'd be happy to link to you if you tell me where your poem is.
If you don't have a blog, you're welcome to either use the comment space here or the Godawful Poetry Fortnight thread over at Caferati.

Ten ways to impress a journalist

2010-07-14T17:18:00.007+05:30

1. Don't bother to remember their beats. That's irrelevant. No matter what they cover, they will be interested in the product or person you represent.

2. Of course they want an 'interaction' with your client. They're turking for it. It doesn't matter whether their publication carries interviews. Or even if their publication covers the area in which your client operates. Your client is all that matters and they will see that if you email them three times. They'll thank you for it.

3. Send out emails, yes, but follow up with a phone call if they don't respond immediately and positively. That thing they say about emails saving time? Rubbish. The human touch is so important and so neglected in this hustling, bustling age.

4. Always call their cellphones, not the landlines that are listed on their visiting cards. That way you can reach them when they're out for a drink or getting some 'me time.' They will appreciate the gesture, since they would otherwise miss out on your important launch / event / interaction. And never call from your cellphone. This way, if they ever need to call you back late on production night to confirm something, they'll only have your office landline and they'll get your voicemail. This saves your 'me time' from being interrupted and the journo will remember this and respect your remarkable work:life balance. Respect is important.

5. Never send them links to large files. It would make the poor dears work extra hard to download them. Instead, send them large attachments which will fill up inboxes. This will ensure that your large attachments get their exclusive attention since they now won't get mail from pesky bosses, colleagues and the subjects of their stories. This will ensure that they never mark your ID as junk mail which will henceforth be delivered straight to the trash.
p.s. It may happen that your email might not get to its destination. You should ensure this does not happen by sending your message — with the large attachments — twice. Thrice for luck.

6. Oh, and never put the text of your press release into the body of the email. That is so last century. Instead, attach a large PDF file with plenty of pictures and fonts of many colours. This will demonstrate your aesthetic sense and technical skillz. (In your covering note, do remember to use SMSese and refer to the recipient as 'u.' Not only will they appreciate this liberty with the language amidst the shackles of their style guides and the frowns of their desk people, this also gives your email a nice non-businessy touch.)

7. Even if they're not working for a daily, which may need photos of your event (which they didn't send someone to cover despite your emails and phone follow-ups), to fill up space on a slow news day, send them pictures. Many of them. And remember: high-resolution images. This shows that you are highly professional and you know that they need print-quality images.

8. When you call, slip in a mention of the car that will pick the journalist up, and the place where they will be staying, even if you know that their publication has a no-freebies policy. Journos are easy to influence with a bit of posh treatment. And their publications won't mind; after all, these are recessionary times, and the news media is facing more cut-backs then ever before.

9. Time your emails so that they land up in the thick of the production cycle. That way the journalists' super-fine-tuned news antennae will recognise that they are important; they will then yell 'Stop The Presses!' (every journo secretly wants to do that) and include your press release in toto, dropping the story about Mr Big's secret deal / mistress.

10. Add them to your newsletter mailing lists without asking them. You're doing them a favour. They lead busy lives, so they don't have time to opt in, and they really appreciate your taking the trouble to do it for them. They're simple creatures, easy to please, without interests of their own, and your company's daily email will be a bright spot in their dull lives.

The #TwyttyrLytton contest

2010-07-01T22:59:00.005+05:30

You've heard of the Bulwer-Lytton Prize, right? (If you haven't, get thee hence immediately. Come back when you're done!)

I think the problem with that otherwise brilliant contest is that the entries are, inevitably, very long. Take the 2010 winner:

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss--a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil.

Great stuff, but, hey, can you retweet it?

So, gentlefolk, I propose the #TwyttyrLytton contest.

The basic rule is the same:
Outdo Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's opening sentence to Paul Clifford. ("It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.")

In addition:

• Entries must be posted on Twitter.
• Entries must be up to 125 characters long, including spaces, and include the #TwyttyrLytton hashtag. (125 characters is what you have left after the hashtag and a space.)
• The contest stays open 24/7.
• Winners will be decided by public acclaim. i.e., you'll get retweeted
• Prizes? Hah.
• Oh, and you give me permission to post my favourites to this blog.

p.s. Short URL for this post: http://tinyurl.com/tlytton

Irregular Conjugations

2010-06-15T20:25:00.003+05:30

#IrregularConjugations on Twitter

I am firm; you are stubborn; they are thick-headed bigots

I am a bit out of condition; you are plump; they are fat

I have taste; you are a bit picky; they are spoiled layabouts

My kids are precocious; your kids need a little discipline; their kids should be in reform school

I'm a patriot; you are jingoistic; they are flaming xenophobes

I tweet often; you are getting a tad obsessive about Twitter; they don't have a life

I am open about my relationships; you can be indiscreet sometimes; they are exhibitionists

I am mellow; you are tipsy; they are dipsomaniacs

I am well-read; you are bookish; they are pedantic bores

I am open-minded; you vacillate occasionally; they don't have two principles to rub together

I am a pop-culture maven; you keep up with trends; they jump on every passing bandwagon

I have personality; you are eccentric; they are barking mad

I have my way of organising things; you are untidy; they are slobs

I am decisive; you are impetuous; they are rash fools

I am an online diarist; you are a blogger; they are a bunch of wankers

I am decisive; you are impetuous; they are rash fools

I have influential friends; you are star-struck; they are brown-nosers

I'm a gourmet; you are a gourmand; they are gluttons

I am a perfectionist; you are obsessive; they are anal

I have a unique personal style; you carry that off quite nicely; they are fashion disasters

Modern Proverbs

2010-03-10T01:46:00.003+05:30

Our contributions to the day's popular hashtag.

His blog is worse than his Twitter bytes

Never judge a Facebook by her profile picture

The grass is always cleaner in Uttaranchal

If at first you don't succeed, get a Rajya Sabha nomination.

A stitch in time saves wardrobe malfunctions

You can't teach an old blog new tweets

Facebook expands to fill the available time

Why keep a Social Media expert when you can bark yourself?

Those who cannot learn from history got MBAs instead

No news is a cable TV strike

Little thongs please little minds

The early bird gets the worm. I prefer muesli.

He who lives by the sword gets a part in a daytime TV show

He who laughs last is just conforming

Too many cooks get TV shows

What's sauce for the goose is a light gravy for the gander

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to be an MTV Roadie

Familiarity breeds

All good things come to he who waits at the dark alley with a cosh

A picture paints a thousand words. But I still don't want your MMS.

A penny saved is bloody impossible

A fool and his money answer ICICI telemarketers

Absence makes the heart go thanda

Birds of a feather retweet each other

Discretion is the better part of contract negotiation

Don't wash your dirty linen in public. Sign an exclusive contract with NDTV Imagine first.

Every picture tells a story. Except a Karan Johar movie.

Good fences are necessary to flog the stuff you nick from your neighbours

Money is the root of RDLJ

Man cannot live by bread alone. He must have some reality TV.

All roads lead to @netra

To err is human, to cover it is CNN-IBN.

Where there is a will, there's litigation

Some have greatness thrust upon them, some achieve greatness, and then there's @jhunjhunwala

The break-Up poem

2010-02-20T23:44:00.001+05:30

Buzz

2010-02-12T03:26:00.002+05:30

Hah! We kinda sorta called this one.

Farmwon't

2010-01-06T01:41:00.001+05:30

Nevah.

Idjut ramblings

2010-01-02T03:54:00.011+05:30

Warning: this is written without having seen read or heard all the arguments on either side, but after reading what is claimed to be the agreement between VV Chopra's company and Chetan Bhagat (PDF file) and seeing this absolutely hilarious clip from a press conference, where Mr Chopra, evidently quite the charmer, asks someone to 'shut up!'

Additonal disclaimer: We're not a Bhagat fan: we think he's a good story-teller, but we don't admire his writing. We have, though, met the man, and we had a fun chat. And we're not an Aamir Khan fan either. We have seen just one of his movies, Ghajini, and though we admired the dedication evident in his prep for the role, we were underwhelmed by both the movie and his performance. And we haven't seen—at least, not that we know of—any of Hirani's or Chopra's work.

Final warning: This post meanders, even by our standards.

We're puzzled.

- Bhagat wants to be recognised as the author of the work that the movie is based on.

- The movie's producers bought the film rights to that book.

- The film's credits, from what Bhagat has tweeted, do acknowledge that it was based on his book, albeit doing so only in the end-credits, somewhere after the names of the extras, which, by his account, he and his mother were upset about.

Aside for self promotion We interviewed Bhagat a little while ago for a story we were doing, and had asked him about the movies. He was realistic, but upbeat:

Forbes India: So far, your impact on popular cinema hasn't been as big as your impact on the book world. By this I mean that the films adapted from your books haven't been promoted as being the product of your mind, as compared to, say, The Da Vinci Code. Do you agree? And if yes, do you see that changing?

Chetan Bhagat: Yes, of course my impact is limited right now in films, and I’d like people to have reasonable expectations of me. It takes a long time and a lot of luck to make a name in Bollywood. Even the superstars have worked hard for decades to get to this point. I am super fortunate that all three books were taken up to be big, mainstream films and even 2 States has attracted a lot of interest. However, in Bollywood, adaptations are just starting, while in Hollywood, it is a seamless industry. Also, don’t forget the language switch that happens in my adaptations – which changes the audience and thus the marketing has to change. All I can say is, my name does add to the buzz of the movie. Even 3 Idiots, which is a megastar Aamir project all the way, became a little more exciting because of its Five Point Someone connection. And that, to me, is huge.

Forbes India: What was it like working with Bollywood?
Chetan Bhagat: It is a lot of fun, and I think it is largely to do with the fact that I’ve worked with very good people. Writing books is lonely, but in movies you at least have some colleagues and leave the house so my kids can’t say ‘my daddy stays at home and doesn’t go to office’. Most importantly, the reach of Bollywood excites me. It is a chance to reach the maximum number of people possible.

He may now have changed his mind about the last bit. Aside ends.

- The PDF file we linked to in the first para includes signed receipts of payments made to Bhagat for the rights to say the film was "Based On The Novel FIVE POINT SOMEONE by Chetan Bhagat": a Rs 100,000 advance and a Rs 1,000,000 'ex-gratia' payment. (Admittedly these sums are a trifle compared to the crores that go into making a film. But Bhagat was less well-known in 2005, and by the standards of author remuneration, it was decent. He'd probably negotiate for much higher sums now, aside from wanting his name more, erm, up-front.)

- Bhagat brings his own following to projects he's associated with. Even assuming, uncharitably, that exactly the same people bought all four of his books, and all those copies were read by only one person each, he still brings a potential audience of around 700,000 people, going by the figures his publishers shared with us. And he does devote a lot of time to nurturing that audience, through his site, blog, tweets, columns, public appearances and what-have-you. If he asked them to see the film, they'd pony up for the multiplex tickets first day, first show, and that's not a bad audience to count on. (We know eff-all about the FDFS economics, we hastily admit.)

Anyway, we were wondering: why are the film's producers vehemently denying the link?

Why is Aamir Khan, that well-known legal luminary, reportedly advising Hirani and Chopra to sue Bhagat?

Why is Chopra frothing at the mouth so entertainingly? (You must see the bit where Khan grabs the microphone from Chopra and keeps it away from him, even to the extent of sticking it between his legs while VVC paws the air ineffectually.)

Why has some chap going to the effort of making, practically overnight, a website which, as of this writing is mainly a a slide presentation calling Bhagat a liar and enumerating, in faulty English, the scenes in the film which aren't from the book? (That's hardly the point, fercryin'outloud. Of course a film will differ from a book. The way a story is told in print cannot be duplicated in film. The grammars of the two media are different. The creators are different: with books, the author is in command, sort of; the reader paints the scene in her own mind based on the words she reads and her own experiences; with film, it's always the director who is the auteur, and the script is moulded to his requirements for telling the story.)

Another aside Oh, and by the way, the IMDB page for the movie has this listing:

Writers:
Chetan Bhagat (book)
Rajkumar Hirani (story)

And the page also contains this entertaining item in the FAQ section, by someone signing himself 'Souvik, thepunisher65':

Which novel is this movie based on?
This movie is based on the Novel 'Five Point Someone' by Chetan Bhagat. But it has not been entirely based on it. Actually this can be called as a totally different movie, just that the characters are inspired.

Ends

Anyway, since we earn our daily bread, and a modest amount of very nice strawberry preserve, by the written word, we have to say that we instinctively want to weigh in on Bhagat's side. For writers, credit is a big thing. Our bylines get us noticed, get us assignments and job offers. (Another bloody aside. Ad copywriters get much, much more money and give themselves many, many more awards: because they don't get bylines, and to keep them working for you, you have to compensate in other ways. Journos and authors are suckers. Or maybe the next major 'right-sizing' efforts in the ad biz will see creative types getting offered bylines in lieu of increments. Aside to the aside: we were once employed as a copywriter.No more asides. We think.)

Strikes us that there are many idiots here. Not least, all the people devoting so much time to thinking and writing about this kerfuffle, thereby keeping the movie and book in the news and saving their PR departments much effort.

Like, sigh,

The Idiot Who Writes This Blog

2009-12-31T20:21:00.000+05:30

May you always have dreams to chase
Enough to eat, weather that's fine
May your year enthrall and amaze
Just don't make it too much better than mine

All the best for 2010, y'all.

I'm a Bhopali

2009-12-01T02:41:00.002+05:30

We Are All Bhopalis

On September 12th, 2001, Jean-Marie Colombani wrote in Le Monde:

“In this tragic moment, when words seem so inadequate to express the shock people feel, the first thing that comes to mind is this: We are all Americans! We are all New Yorkers, just as surely as John F. Kennedy declared himself to be a Berliner in 1962 when he visited Berlin. Indeed, just as in the gravest moments of our own history, how can we not feel profound solidarity with those people, that country, the United States, to whom we are so close and to whom we owe our freedom, and therefore our solidarity?”

The previous day, 2,974 had people died in New York, Washington and Shanksville. And we all felt as Colombani did, our hearts going out to those innocent victims of terrorism and their bereaved families.

**

On December 3rd, 1984, in Bhopal, India, a leak from a methyl isocyanate gas tank in a Union Carbide plant sent out a dense poisonous cloud that killed 23,000 people — many of them that night, others soon after. Another 30,000 people have been affected since, by chemicals leaking from the abandoned factory, poisoning the water supply.

It has been described as the world’s worst industrial disaster. (Bhopal.org has many descriptions and recollections of the disaster and its aftermath.)

25 years later, the survivors still do not have justice. Such compensation as has been offered has been paltry. And, of course, chemicals continue to leak, continue to poison Bhopalis, continue to result in disease, birth defects, and more suffering.

We would like you help in bringing the world’s attention back to Bhopal. We would like to invite you to declare, loud and strong, that you are a Bhopali too.

(We do not want any financial support; this WordPress sub-domain is free, and if we do move to our own website, we’re happy to pay for the domain and the hosting. If you want to help financially, please use the ‘donate’ buttons on the Bhopal.org site or any other organisations that will use your money to help the survivors in Bhopal.)

So we should all stop linking to Newscorp stuff?

2009-11-09T16:14:00.003+05:30

"There's a doctrine called fair use, which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether... but we'll take that slowly."
Rupert Murdoch, in The Guardian.

The (Twitter) Gospel according to St Peter

2009-11-09T15:45:00.006+05:30

Remember Follow Fridays and keep them holy.

As ye tweet, thus shall ye be retweeted.

Thou shalt not stalk thy neighbour's followers in the hope that they follow ye.

Thou shalt not plug thy status updates into Facebook, that barren land of nonbelievers & quiz-takers.

Thou shalt not bear false witness. That includes tweeting stuff you only actually saw on TV.

Honour thy father and thy mother. What happens at home shalt not be tweeted.
(Unless, of course, thy parents tweeted first)
(You *really* shouldn't have got them on to Twitter, y'know.)

Thou shalt not sledge @stephenfry. He has earned his moods.
@shashitharoor is, however, fair game.

Thou shalt get back to work, hm?

#Thou #shalt #use #hashtags #judiciously.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's ass. Well, okay, maybe if s/he's really callipygous.

If ye seek to be retweeted, ye shall ensure that thy tweets have enough characters left over to permit it.

Thou shalt casually mention @gulpanag in thy tweets, as if you're, like, friends and all.

Thou shalt quit while thou art ahead.

Thou shalt not relentlessly pimp thy blog. (These tweets archived at http://bit.ly/nvenr)

RT @zigzackly Thou shalt not relentlessly pimp thy blog. (These tweets archived at http://bit.ly/nvenr)

Retweeting yourself - or RTing what others tweet to you - is bad form. Only SEOs do that.

RT @zigzackly The Gospel according to St Peter: Retweeting yourself - or RTing what others tweet to you - is bad form. Only SEOs do that.

Celebrate Bandra Festival Souvenir - Call for Submissions

2009-09-08T04:13:00.005+05:30

(Original post here.)

The Celebrate Bandra Festival happens once every two years in Bandra. This year, the festival will be in November. I'm helping curate the literature section. More about past festivals at celebratebandra.net (the site won't be updated with this year's schedule for a little while yet).

Here's the brief.

"You're My Home": you live in Bandra, so what makes it home? (If you don't live in Bandra, imagine it). The trees, the birds, the air, your nosy neighbours, your generous and helpful neighbours, their culture and yours, the sea, the waves, the aromas, the convenience, the excitement. It's home, so like every home, it has ups, it has downs. But what is it about the environment of Bandra, seen as broadly as you can, that makes it home for you?

You can submit anything that can appear in print (without spending enormous amounts of money): essays, short fiction, poetry, play scripts, illustrations, photographs.

Please email your submissions to celebrate.bandra.festival@gmail.com

Last date for submissions: September 30th, 11:59p.m.

You can make more than one stand-alone submission, but please do so in separate emails, to help the selection process.

For text submissions
• Your submission must be close to, but not over, the 1000 word mark.
• Please paste your text into the body of the email. No attachments, please.
• Please use one of these subject lines: Souvenir Submission - short story, Souvenir Submission - poem, Souvenir Submission - essay, or Souvenir Submission - script.

For photographs, scanned illustrations or computer-generated art
• Please submit only one piece. (A picture being worth a thousand words and all that.)
• You can include a short (not more than 100 words) descriptor or caption in the body of your email.
• If your image is a very large file, please upload it online somewhere* and mail in a link.
• If you think you must submit more than one image as part of the same entry, then please mail in only one, but add a description of what the rest of the series will be like, or upload the additional material elsewhere and send in a link. If we want to see the rest, we'll mail you.
• Please use one of these subject lines: Souvenir Submission - photograph, Souvenir Submission - illustration, or Souvenir Submission - digital art

In one paragraph at the end of your email, please include your name, postal address, email address and a phone number, land or cellular, where you can be reached during the day and in the evenings.

By submitting, you declare that the work is your own, or that you have collaborated in its creation and are authorised to submit on behalf of the collective. Please remember India's laws on libel and obscenity. And for visual art submissions that depict people, especially photographs, please make sure you have your subject's permission. For any form of 'found art,' text or visual, please ensure that you are not infringing India's copyright laws.

Entries will be short-listed by Rahul Goswami. Rahul is an intermittent Bandra resident, and otherwise a researcher working on the links between economic growth, livelihoods and agriculture.

The short-list will then be judged by Dilip D'Souza, writer and journalist, who is the editor of the souvenir, and Joe Campana, and the selected submissions will appear in print. Updates on the lists will be posted to the Caferati blog, and, if it's ready by then, the updated Celebrate Bandra website.

Rewards: the joy of seeing your work in print, and contributing towards the Celebrate Bandra effort. ~~We are trying to get some small prizes for the best entries, but this is very unlikely, so don't count on it.~~ UpdateThe top five entries, across categories, will be marked as such in the souvenir, and, yes, will get small prizes.

Do please pass this on to friends and well-wishers, from Bandra or elsewhere. Feel free to copy this text to your website or blog, and to online forums where you know it will be welcome.

* Possible sites where you can upload your work: Flickr, Photobucket, OurMedia, Picassa.

Godawful Poetry Fortnight - 4

2009-08-23T23:51:00.003+05:30

One has been most remiss
One whole day one has missed
A godawful host am I, alas
To let a godawful fortnight day pass
Without finding a moment in time
To add to the feast of mediocre rhyme

Godawful Poetry Fortnight - 3

2009-08-21T03:57:00.002+05:30

The side-effects of the H1N1 influenza

You know what the worst
Side-effect of this burst
Of this oh so very
Unfortunately-
Named flu is?

It's the amateur wags,
And their lame borrowed gags
Littering the statusphere
Wherever you peer.
Gah.

It's even worse, you will agree
Than godawful poetry.

Godawful Poetry Fortnight - 2

2009-08-20T22:40:00.001+05:30

I,
I write for you.
You,
You write for me?
We,
We both write?
Okay?

Godawful Poetry Fortnight - Guest Post 1

2009-08-19T14:55:00.001+05:30

My humble contribution to this fantastic, much-looked-forward to annual event:

Banished

They dragged me with brute force to the door,
Callously kicked me down the stairs below-
And screeched like the oft quoted Raven, “Nevermore!”

I staggered to my feet and limped my way across the street,
With fumbling fingers groped for my pack of woe,
And struck a match- Ah, even in adversity life can be sweet.

So now I wander lonely spewing dark, belligerent clouds,
That lurk on high o’er the stained cityscape,
And insidiously creep into the lungs of the teeming crowds.

All I ask for is Keats' Grecian urn to tip the ash,
While contributing generously to the city's smog,
It wouldn’t hurt would it, that dead sexy touch of dash?

By Rupa Gulab who, incidentally is not blushing furiously, but rolling on the floor with mirth. Shameless!

Godawful Poetry Fortnight - 1

2009-08-19T14:49:00.003+05:30

In a Godawful Mood,
Just not a Godawful Poetry mood.
But as the host, I can't be rude,
So here's my pseud-
o poem.

Godawful Poetry Fortnight

Son of Godawful Poetry Fortnight - 19th - 31st August

2009-08-16T21:05:00.007+05:30

We launched the first Godawful Poetry Fortnight here last year. (You can read all our contributions here, and this was a brief article in the TOI about the Fortnight.)

Cut to the chase: it's that time of the year again!

The essentials:

• Godawful Poetry Fortnight runs from the 19th to the 31st August.

• Our Patron Saint is William Wordsworth.

And he gets this signal honour for saying that poetry "is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." Way too many aspiring poets have rallied behind that banner, too few going so far as recollecting those emotions in tranquillity, let alone reading the rest of the preface to Lyrical Ballads (which can be found on Bartleby, for those interested).

• To join in, all you have to do is post on your blog* a godawful poem you have written, with—all totally optional—a brief note about GPF, a bit about what godawful poetry means to you, and a link to this post.

• Post godawful poems as often as you like during the Fortnight. (The True Believers Challenge: post thirteen godawful poems, one on each day of the Fortnight.) Squeeze your muse like a boil. Get it all out. Pester your friends to post too. Once GPF is done, you will write good poetry for the rest of the year, yes?

• Please use this Technorati tag on your post: Godawful Poetry Fortnight. Here's the HTML for the tag: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Godawful+Poetry+Fortnight" rel="tag">Godawful Poetry Fortnight</a>

• To those who feel the need to point out this Fortnight lasts only thirteen days, we draw our cape around us, and say, in a marked manner, "Poetic license."

* I'd be happy to link to you if you tell me where your poem is.
If you don't have a blog, you're welcome to either use the comment space here or the Godawful Poetry Fortnight thread over at Caferati.

Close

2009-08-12T04:39:00.002+05:30

Sunday evening, driving from St Xavier's to the office.

Peddar Road, Kemps Corner flyover, light traffic.

Car in front of me brakes suddenly.

Pretty much have to stand on my brakes to avoid a prang.

Mutter under breath. Traffic continues to move. Car in front sets off again. I nudge the accelerator. Coast down the flyover. Come to the the bit where the road rises again. See light ahead is orange. Start braking and gearing down..

Except that the brake pedal goes all the way to the floor without any reaction from the car.

Luckily for me, the light turns red and the cars around me stop. Luckily for me I wasn't going to fast, and neither were the cars around me. I cut through the red light, at the tail end of that bit of traffic flow. I continue to slow down. Turn on the hazard lights. Gently prod the accelerator just enough to keep the car moving up the slope until it crests. Simultaneously gently turning the wheel to bring the car next to the pavement. Pull up the handbrake and turn off the engine. Lean back. Shudder. Sweat flows.

The Chhattisgarh government has banned Charandas Chor

2009-08-07T02:45:00.004+05:30

(Background: The story in the Hindustan Times and the Times of India

This came to us from actor Denzil Smith.

Press Release condemning ban on Charandas Chor

We are shocked to learn from press reports that the BJP government of Chhattisgarh has banned Charandas Chor, a classic of the modern Indian theatre, written and produced by Habib Tanvir. The play was first done in the 1970s, and is originally based on an oral folk tale from Rajasthan. Habib Tanvir worked on this tale, introducing into it elements of the art and beliefs of the Satnami community. Satnami singers and dancers have performed in this play, and it has been seen by members of the community several times. In Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, there are several rural troupes who are today performing some version of this play.

The play itself is the story of a thief who, under the influence of a guru, pledges never to tell a lie. He sticks to his pledge, even at the cost of his life. This superb tragic-comedy, in a thoroughly entertaining and artistic manner, brings into focus the moral and ethical degeneration of our society, in which, paradoxically, it is a thief who ends up being more honest than those who supposed to be the custodians of our morality.

Charandas Chor remains Habib Tanvir’s best-known play, and has been performed literally hundreds of times by his world-renowned Naya Theatre troupe all over India and in several countries across the world. It was made into a film by Shyam Benegal, with Smita Patil in the lead, in 1975, and was the first Indian play to win the prestigious Fringe First award at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival in 1982. It then did a successful run on the London stage.

We demand that the Chhattisgarh government immediately revoke this absurd ban.

2009-08-04T03:12:00.001+05:30

me pomes they are of no import
they aren't the deep, reflective sort
but give them this: they're very short
okay?

2009-08-03T00:43:00.001+05:30

Ev'ry dogg'rel must have its day
Alas, your bard's mere mortal clay
Rhyme-a-day plans gang aft agley
Ah well.

2009-07-30T03:09:00.000+05:30

Whatcha been up to? How you is?
Whatcha been doing weekends? How's biz?
No, this isn't a Facebook Quiz
Hell no!

2009-07-30T02:22:00.000+05:30

It's kaiku time! It's been a while.
We all have walked many a mile,
Six-abreast or in single file.
Wha's up?

Spot the differences

2009-07-26T03:05:00.003+05:30

1: How Bill Gates Blew $258 million in India's HIV Corridor (Forbes India -- where I work -- 19th June issue)

2: Exiting All Windows... (Outlook, June 27th issue)

Help needed at Geeta Nagar, Bombay

2009-07-25T01:08:00.002+05:30

The high tidal waves on 24th July destructed several homes at Geeta Nagar, the largest slum in Navy Nagar and washed away roofs and huts of more than a hundred poor people.

Please contribute rice, atta, sugar, tea leaves, pulses and also bedsheets, and clothes for men, women, children.

Any help is welcome.

This came to me via Lily Ahluwalia on Facebook, with a request to pass it on.

The person to contact is Shridhar Naik, of Helping Hands in Service. You can find their Karmayog page here (couldn't find any other website), and Mr Naik's Ryze page is here.

Contact details: +91 22 22876031, +91 98211 48796, shridharnaik@gmail.com

(Cross-posted)

2009-07-20T21:54:00.000+05:30

It's not fair that on the day your back
has one of its spasm attacks
that a bug should bug your stomaach
Gah

Bandra Worli Pee Link

2009-07-06T02:20:00.002+05:30

(This came to us in a forward. The person who sent it doesn't know its provenance. It was supposed to have been taken on the day the bridge opened.)

2009-07-02T16:09:00.001+05:30

R.I.P., 377 farce
The law's now slightly less an arse
Next: it's time to legalise grass!
Bum Bole!

Steve Martin does MJ

2009-07-01T20:52:00.001+05:30

From The New Yorker's News Desk blog:

As a dancer, Michael Jackson was great. He was like Fred Astaire. This video, a parody of the “Billie Jean” video, was done for “The New Show,” which was a prime-time NBC program that Lorne Michaels did in 1983-1984, when he wasn’t producing “Saturday Night Live.” This was the opening—it was the first piece on the first episode of the show. Michael Jackson had recently done what I consider to be his life-changing performance on the Grammy Awards, where he did the Moonwalk and threw his hat offstage. He was just brilliant. Then the “Billie Jean” video came out. And this was a parody of that.

I’m not sure whose idea it was; it might have been Lorne’s. Pat Birch choreographed it. The hard move was that little leg twist that he did. You really have to throw your leg. I did it a thousand times in about three days. And a couple of weeks later I noticed—er, I have a pain here. The pain lasted about two years, then it went away on its own.

2009-06-22T15:25:00.000+05:30

Been waiting—longing—for the day
Did everything short of pray
Now it's here at last, yeehah! yay!
First rain!

2009-06-09T14:39:00.000+05:30

Pot-bellied clouds flirt with the sun
"The monsoon's here!" we say, "What fun!"
Then, to the east, the bastards run
No rain

2009-06-08T15:19:00.001+05:30

See here, I ate my fruit and all
Ignoring eggs and bacon's call
Dinner was clean: sprouts and dal*
St Pete!

*You must say 'dal' the Anglo-Indian way, to sound like "doll."

2009-06-08T15:16:00.000+05:30

Breakfast at two? You lazy sod!
You're no go-getter, you're a fraud!
Your parents must have spared the rod!
Gerrup!

2009-06-08T15:12:00.000+05:30

Another day I live to tango
Pomegranate, muesli, mango
Breakfast is done, now go man go
To work

2009-06-08T01:28:00.001+05:30

No more worries about inflation,
discrimination, state of the nation
No more depression or elation
Now that I'm just an eructation

This was in response to Amit Varma, who in response to my Facebook status message (which was "Peter Griffin can feel some nonsense rhyme coming on."), commented:

Monster called up Mommy Dear
'Mommy, Mommy, hunger's here
But since you haven't sent my tiffin
I think I'll just eat Peter Griffin.'

More from Facebook, where, in addition to Mr Varma, Mr Basu chips in, as does Anupama Bijur:

Samit Basu at 08:59 on 13 June

who is fighting air pollution?
who's the ozone layer solution?
who makes regal eagles chirp?
Peter Griffin, sentient burp.

Samit Basu at 09:05 on 13 June

who is stirring stormclouds rowdy?
who meets angels and says howdy?
who makes squiffy skuas squelch?
Peter Griffin, zen-like belch

Sudeep Chakravarti at 11:41 on 13 June

bless you, peter und samit.

Peter Griffin at 14:50 on 13 June

Amit's monster would've been a cow
And we all know, from science class, how
These ruminants regurgitate their chow
Ozone b 'ware! I'm the "me" in "methane" now

Peter Griffin at 14:58 on 13 June

Sure, a burp's a noxious gas
But worse things could have come to pass
One could have been mere bio-mass
Expelled with force from the cow's, um, other end.

Samit Basu at 16:32 on 13 June

Peter G, most kind and gracious
Now turned into products gaseous!
Amit Varma! Blackguard! Thief!
With your pets we have a beef.

Anupama Bijur at 17:16 on 13 June

Griffin, Basu and Varma on Facebook
Together a bio-patent took,
Gobar, biomass or hot air,
Further verses will share.

Amit Varma at 22:40 on 13 June

Samit, Peter, do not jump
To conclusions with a bump
The Monster in question is not bovine
And yes, Samit, Peter's quite divine.

Amit Varma at 22:41 on 13 June

Ok, I'll tell you another fable
Monster sat down at the table
Shouted, "Mommy, just for Amit
I think I'll also consume Samit."

Anupama Bijur at 23:00 on 13 June

The Monster did not cherry pick
Consumed Pete, Amit and Samit
And down in his intestine,
They continued to talk in rhyme.

Samit Basu at 23:38 on 13 June

Alas! This monster du jour
Observes the rhyming Ms Bijur,
Consigns her to chambers gastric
And then sights the Duck Fantastic
I say, 'hey, you, monster, look,... Read more
Want to star in my next book?'
While the monster grimly ponders,
I strike! With the Beak of Wonders!
Spotting, on the corpse's paunch-o
The inscription 'I am Sancho'
I realize, as I suspected,
That fiend Varma stands detected!
Soon as I, now Case Inspector,
Construct my Zig Ressurector,
Spend all monies in my wallet
To turn Zig from gas to solid,
We'll be back, a duo most deadly
Fight this Varma/Monster medley,
And then say, 'Hey! Ma Monster! Dammit!
We fed your son your friend Amit.'

Amit Varma at 23:48 on 13 June

Samit, I like your imagination
I'm sure it'll help my friend's digestion
The Monster really liked young Peter
(Especially his sense of meter)
But still, the lad caused him some heartburn... Read more
All night it was turn, and twist, and turn
But now he'll have you with cold milk
And other poets of your ilk
Such as Ms Bijur (pleased to meet you)
Yes, sweet lady, you'll be eaten too.

Anupama Bijur at 09:06 on 14 June

The beast stirred awake on Sunday
Bloated from his feast yesterday
And seriously pondered Samit’s offer
To star in his next book on Monsters.
... Read more
Thought he, `Three-poets-and-the-lady mix,
Not as good as my own iambic.
Besides the courses came in the wrong order
Where was the hors d’oeuvre?’

`Next time, come one at a time,
Take a token, stand in line
We’ll have to pair you with a wine,
I stand on ceremony when I dine.’

`Amit would’ve worked with guacamole
Samit would’ve done instead of poulet
Peter is as good a sorbet
You see, I’m quite the gourmet.’

So Samit, I wish to decline
The offer to star in your set of rhymes
I’m ready for a food show, I am,
With none other than Anthony Bourdain.

Anupama Bijur at 10:04 on 14 June

`Heston may have his molecular gastronomy,
I have secret recipes from my Mommy
And with Peter Griffin,
Who needs liquid nitrogen? '

2009-06-04T13:53:00.000+05:30

Now that this issue is done (done!)
We thought we would have some fun (fun!)
But at our head is a gun (gun!):
Next issue!

2009-06-03T03:02:00.000+05:30

Our kaikus we had no time to do
Scrabble suffered grievously too
And books we bought are still enqueued
Deadlines!

Parrots, the Universe and Everything

2009-05-29T01:24:00.003+05:30

Almost 90 minutes. One man on stage. No props. No fancy slideshow or snazzy film. No music. Just talking to the audience, and a bit of reading from one of his books. Can't think of very many people who could pull that off.

The talk is about his travels while writing Last Chance to See, which he expresses great affection for. "The runt of the litter," he calls it.

2009-05-16T14:09:00.000+05:30

Mr Singh, you're quite a charmer
Looks like India has good karma*
This is better than Obama
What say?

* You have to say 'karma' with an American accent

2009-05-16T13:57:00.000+05:30

Can't thank all you voters enough
You did your job, you got the stuff
You've shown em who is really tough
Yay you!

2009-05-16T13:52:00.000+05:30

Coffee's drunk, and I've cleared my head
To office now, the old tin shed
The magazine's almost in bed
What joy!

2009-05-16T13:21:00.001+05:30

At last the elections are done
*sigh* Now what will we do for fun
Since IPL games we do shun?
Yay books!

2009-05-16T12:24:00.000+05:30

What shall we write poems about?
Is there anything worth a shout?
Ah yes, the defeat of the louts!
Yay voters!

2009-05-10T22:14:00.000+05:30

Witty friends and conversation:
Cabbages, kings, and inflation
The better writers in the nation
Like that

2009-05-10T22:11:00.000+05:30

Dinner after the launch was had
Though the muzak was rather sad
The food and booze were not half-bad
Burp

2009-05-10T22:08:00.000+05:30

Got my copy signed, bought lots more
Enough to read for weeks and more
But me bank balance is sure
Depleted

2009-05-10T22:00:00.000+05:30

Amit read, with much impact
A well-chosen short extract
In which the protagonist climaxed
I swear

2009-05-10T21:57:00.001+05:30

Saturday, the evening we took
Ourselves to Juhu for a look
At the Varma launching his book
Nice day!

2009-05-10T21:53:00.000+05:30

Friday was one long meeting
Free moments few, very fleeting
Our Scrabble time took a beating
Deeyam

2009-05-10T21:32:00.000+05:30

Thursday noon, and back in action
Attempting to give satisfaction
Admittedly with little traction
Ah well

2009-05-10T20:32:00.000+05:30

Must have been something we ate
First the tum bug cleaned our slate
Then Fever, chills; one stayed prostrate
Ah, fate!

2009-05-10T20:14:00.000+05:30

Honesty compels us to say
We were only ill from Tuesday
Running (literally) through Thursday
TMI?

2009-05-10T20:13:00.000+05:30

No nonsense poems for one week
Spirit willing but body was weak
Coz we were ill, but now we're theek
We're back

2009-05-03T20:42:00.000+05:30

Been topping up on sleep today
Woke late, breakfasted, and then, hey,
I found some more sleep debt to pay
Siesta!

2009-05-02T13:24:00.000+05:30

When your whole body genuflects
to medication's side effects
[This doesn't rhyme - delete this text]
Bleargh

2009-05-02T13:17:00.000+05:30

Being ill on a long weekend
Not much fun, I tell you, my friend
But *sigh* at least there's time to mend
Gah

2009-04-30T00:41:00.000+05:30

This page, you'll be relieved to find
Has way too much on its wee mind
That's why it is so far behind
On kaiku

2009-04-26T22:54:00.000+05:30

Should take the car to the garage
Or maybe get a good massage
But next week is looming large
So, sleep

2009-04-26T22:43:00.000+05:30

Saturday went by really fast
Barely here, and now it's the past
I just can't make the weekend last
*poof* gone

2009-04-24T15:19:00.000+05:30

One more we think we can bake up
Partly, to, um, kinda make up
And a bit of slack to take up
Okay?

2009-04-24T15:14:00.000+05:30

One more to go and we are done
Then we must—really—have to run
Into that bloody awful sun
To work

2009-04-24T15:11:00.000+05:30

So why is it that we did shirk?
It wasn't just some arbit quirk
Our back was out, and we had work
Honest!

2009-04-24T15:08:00.000+05:30

Three poems behind! Alas! Alack!
Get this monkey offa my back
At least give it a bloody whack
Begone!

2009-04-21T20:03:00.000+05:30

Music may soothe a savage breast
But for the demons in our chest
Silly rhyme, bad puns and low jests
Work best

2009-04-21T19:54:00.000+05:30

Grouchy, tired and headachey
Shall quaff a cup of Munnar tea
And write some lousy poetry
There. Better.

2009-04-19T18:59:00.000+05:30

If, perchance, you don't like cricket
Boy, you're on a sticky wicket
Get a bucket, lad, and kick it
You're dead

2009-04-19T18:53:00.000+05:30

If rhyme was all it took
I'd be in my wee nook
Working on my tenth book

2009-04-17T23:33:00.000+05:30

Friday blues are a-kicking in
Naught to do, not a fricking thing
'cept watch my arteries thick'ning
Yaaaawn

2009-04-16T19:34:00.001+05:30

Early to bed, early to rise
That was my day, surprise, surprise
Me, not someone else in disguise
Honest!

2009-04-16T00:21:00.000+05:30

Ye who twitter, hear our plea:
We ♥ you but, dude, really
Could you not put your tweets on FB?
Please?

2009-04-14T20:43:00.000+05:30

lipid profile: done, thyroid test: check.
also did the eye test; I need specs.
middle age is a pain in the neck.
heck

Social Media Climber

2009-04-13T13:00:00.000+05:30

noun.
Someone who assiduously builds himself (it's usually a him) up as a social media expert with copious blog posts, tweets, et cetera that cite what the genuine innovators have done, and adds on a layer of jargon and marketing speak in the hope that clueless brand manager types will hire him as a consultant, and similarly ignorant media will think of him as an expert. (The latter is likely, because media types tend to have take the 're' out of 'research' and hit Google, and the SMC will have ensured high rankings by linking to — and being linked back to reciprocally by — other SMCs.) If either of these things happen at least once, he will then post/tweet/status-message it to all and sundry. Over time, he starts to believe it himself.
The only people more boring than SMCs are SEOs.

2009-04-13T12:00:00.001+05:30

Summer brings me to my knees, hear me wheeze:
Could we have some breeze, pretty please?
I don't want to freeze, just some ease..
Some rain?

2009-04-12T21:33:00.001+05:30

Now that our rep is doggy poo
Shubh Easter to all of you
Easter Mubarak, that works too
Shalom

2009-04-12T04:38:00.000+05:30

Actually it wasn't late
In GMT, it's the right date
And for our friends in the U States
It's early

2009-04-12T04:33:00.000+05:30

Saturday's kaiku is so late
Wasn't because I had a date
No, wasn't too much on my plate
Just lazy

2009-04-10T22:02:00.003+05:30

Didja see it? "Tee Gee Eye Gee Eff!" *
Sacrilege! Double-Yoo Tee Eff!
Stone that pagan bloody Griff!
Crucify him!

* Our Facebook status message, from Thursday night up to the time we changed it to this one on Friday, was "TGIGF." Our chances of salvation are now even further down the toilet than before.

2009-04-09T15:22:00.000+05:30

Neighbour's getting new window grills
Hammers, cutters, bloody loud drills
Makes me want to head for the hills
Bastards

zigzackly

Jaipur Literature Festival

The history of Star Trek

A third view on the Lok Pal bill (and may there be more!)

Recommended reading on the Lok Pal bill(s)

Rs 0.02

Great-Grandson of Godawful Poetry Fortnight

Jhunjhunwala was too busy to go to the Situation(al Comedy) Room

Bappi Goes To The Situation Room

Chennai Reporters' Beat

Change a letter, change the story

Caferati's Fifth Annual Poetry Slam at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival

The Essential Indian Books survey / the Readership survey

ForbesLife India - an e-sampler

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a..

In Madras

Stet 'Stet'

O tempora! O mores!

Does this look like a publishing scam to you?

10-10-10 10:10:10 – 10-10-10 10:10:10

Grandson of Godawful Poetry Fortnight - 19th to 31st August

Ten ways to impress a journalist

The #TwyttyrLytton contest

Irregular Conjugations

Modern Proverbs

The break-Up poem

Buzz

Farmwon't

Idjut ramblings

I'm a Bhopali

We Are All Bhopalis

So we should all stop linking to Newscorp stuff?

The (Twitter) Gospel according to St Peter

Celebrate Bandra Festival Souvenir - Call for Submissions

Godawful Poetry Fortnight - 4

Godawful Poetry Fortnight - 3

Godawful Poetry Fortnight - 2

Godawful Poetry Fortnight - Guest Post 1

Godawful Poetry Fortnight - 1

Son of Godawful Poetry Fortnight - 19th - 31st August

Close

The Chhattisgarh government has banned Charandas Chor

Spot the differences

Help needed at Geeta Nagar, Bombay

Bandra Worli Pee Link

Steve Martin does MJ

Parrots, the Universe and Everything

Social Media Climber