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

Bappi Goes To The Situation Room

For Samit.

Chennai Reporters' Beat

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

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

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

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

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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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ForbesLife India - an e-sampler

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..

..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

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'

'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.)


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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.)

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(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.)