Since When Has Reading Become a Skill?

Now the hullabaloo has settled down in Jaipur, dust and all, those peoples who consider telling and criticising stories as their bread-and-butter occupation can rest content. Rest content because, as so many things happen in India, it has gone into oblivion after the initial posturing and hype. We create our own brouhaha and then sit and laugh a hysterical "ha ha, I told you so."

Be that as it may. One lesson learnt was the amount of interest a banned book can create. Rushdie (actually the name is pronounced "Rooshdie") is now a celebrity twice over. Not that I mind. I like his writing and have read almost all his books. His sort of magic realism is what I try hard to re-create in my fiction writing. I think India can only be explicated in terms of magic realism. Just a generalisation. How else do you explain a scenario where an author is not allowed into a country because of a book he wrote a decade ago. That, too, not because anyone has really read it and analysed it, but because the title seemed provocative. 

A little pontification here. Just venting ire. Books and the ideas contained therein have changed lives, governments, societies in the past. At least, that is what Das Capital, Origin of the Species, and A Summary View of the Rights of British America (by Thomas Jefferson, drafter of the Declaration of American Independence) did. And to consider that books aren't that important is to say that we don't value learning and information. 

In India, I find the reading habit declining. On the commute to work I find most people glued to their music devices emitting a tinny sort of sound. Why don't they read something? When I am reading (I am reading "The Story of My Experiments with Truth") they ask to see the book, admire its jacket, turn it round and round in their hand, peep into a few pages and sort of mentally say, "No, I can't read it." Their minds are blocked.

Of late (I think this is a fall out of the television obsession) reading is considered a skill. Whoa, come on, a skill? When has it become a skill? I thought it was something that came naturally to a literate person, as natural as eating, drinking and sleeping. No, no, no, reading is not a skill, it should come to one as naturally as existing in this cacophonous world. We talk, talk, talk, rubbish. We don't read. That's where all our troubles start.

Amen to that!

I am @johnwriter on Twitter and John.Matthew on Facebook. I blog here.

The Kerala Naming Omnibus (Supposedly)!

Saw this in my mail, "Baby Varghese turns 73." Oh God, what's this a baby of 73? "No stupid," God said, "Baby is proper name in Malayalam, "it doesn't mean Baby as in small children."

So, hm, Kerala has this interesting history of assigning names to people, at least, in the area I hail from. In earlier times names were given according to the name of the place where the house stands. Thus:

Thekkeveetil meant "house on the south".

Kizhakeveetil meant "house on the east".

Puliyelil meant "house which stands near the tamarind tree".

Poovannamnilkunnathil meant "house which stands next to the Poovannam tree".

Vadakoot meant "house on the north".

These names were also used as names and surnames. The first names in those days were:

Kunjukunju meaning "little little son".

Kunjumon meaning "little baby who is the son".

Thankachen meaning "son who is of gold".

Then a radical change happened and new and more cosmopolitan names came into being:

Rajan

Soman

Santhosh

Jose

Sunny

Anil, etc.

These names were concatenated with either Mathew, Thomas, George, Kurien or Chandy to form the full name.

The latest fad is of course more interesting leading to unnecessary hilarity, sometimes. The new naming trend is to form a concatenation of the first initials of the parents.

Gigin may have parents whose first names beginning with G and N.

Jojo may have parents whose first names beginning with J and J.

Soli may have parents whose first names beginning with S and L.

Biju may have parents whose first names beginning with B and J.

so on, so forth. 

Interestingly a woman's name was Shirley and the man's name was Thomas and they invented a name of "Shit" for their child. Yes, my friend Henry informs me there is such a boy in his neighbourhood in Kerala - somehow, doomed to carry that name - probably unaware of what the word means.

Sometimes parents name the first son as Biju and then being lazy to search for a new name, names the second son as Jibu, a reversal of the consonants.

That's the interesting case of Malayali names.

Also interesting is the names of buses and shops. During my recent trip to Kerala I found a bus named "Dot Com." Also a small roadside coffee shop was named "Cyber Cafe" though there weren't any computers within a kilometres' radius.

I am @johnwriter on Twitter and John.Matthew on Facebook. I blog here.

Rushdie May Speak Through Video Conferencing

Back and forth went the allegations and accusations. Suspense was rife at Jaipur Literary Festival and elsewhere in the country. We waited with bated breath to see if Rushdie will speak through video conferencing. At last, according to a tweet by Forbes India magazine it appears that he will. Meanwhile, critic Nilanjana Roy's petition to un-ban (whatever that means) Satanic Verses garnered 1000 signatures in no time.

Meanwhile authors Amitava Kumar and Hari Kunzru left the country fearing arrest and detention. Jeet Thayil and Ruchir Joshi remain in the country and Jeet is nonplussed. His novel Narcopolis (about which I had written here on my blog) is a lyrical novel on the lines of Satanic Verse and he maintains that no copyright has been infringed or law broken. The authors only read from a printed page not a book, and in case of a ban, only the import of the book is banned. The organisers stated in their press release:

Our endeavor has always been to provide a platform to foster an exchange of ideas and the love of literature, strictly within the four corners of the law. We remain committed to this objective.

Apparently, the issue of the ban comes under the Ministry of Finance as it is in charge of Customs and Excise. What the ministry did was to ban the import of the book in any form. So when copies were obtained from the Internet and read at the festival it amounted to infringement of Intellectual Property Rights and if Rushdie as the owner of the property condones this infringement, then, in actuality, there's no breach of any kind. Correct?

I may be wrong, after all, I don't know. But this is my two penny worth to the ongoing imbroglio.

I am @johnwriter on Twitter and John.Matthew on Facebook. I blog here.

Hari Kunzru on Why He Read from Rushdie's Novel at the Jaipur Literary Festival

Here's Hari Kunzru, US-based author of Indian origin, defending why he read from Satanic Verses at the Jaipur Literary Festival.

I am @johnwriter on Twitter and John.Matthew on Facebook. I blog here.

The Salman Rushdie Affair, Answers to Some Questions Plij!

The whole Salman Rushdie affair is nauseating. I am shocked how it has divided the literary community and how charges are being traded between the organisers of the Jaipur Literary Festival and the writers who are participating. 

I am not the one who takes sides in literary issues. But some questions arise in the mind - ignorant as I am - which need to be addressed:

• Why didn't the government decide to allow Rushdie to come and provide him with Z-category security?
• Is a live event the right forum to lodge your protest, that too, many years after the book was banned?
• Can the government explain why it banned "Satanic Verses"? Has any secretariat-walla read the book?
• What is the purpose of these literary festivals? Is it to generate some controversy?
• How does festivals help aspiring writers? Do they really get to meet literary agents and publishers?
• Is Jaipur Literary Festival worth the biting cold and huge crowds?

If you have any answers to the above questions, please go ahead and comment. Thanks!

I am @johnwriter on Twitter and John.Matthew on Facebook. I blog here.

A Few Thoughts on a Sunday

Another Sunday and a few generalisations and thoughts, all my own work (as Behram Contractor used to say.).

In these times of flash mobs and surprise sales pitches, I don't know if a newspapers should only promote the events it is sponsoring. Well, okay, it's the marathon and nobody minds. But in the newspaper is some other health thing that clearly states that its an joint venture of the newspaper with another health service company. It was featured on the front page and I found it rather odd. It was also written by the company executive. I have been used to such oddities and have stuck with the newspaper for want of a better one. 

Aren't we diluting the newsworthiness of the opinions when so-and-so's column is sponsored by so-and-so brand and even the newspaper has an opinion of its own for everything. I think opinions are for readers to have and not for the media itself to make. It makes the newspaper into a colourful brochure and not into something of intellectual value. After all, what intellectual value can accrue to a newspaper if it doesn't have a literary page and no book reviews. I wonder.

Another thought is that music television has degenerated into a forum to humiliate and demoralise young people. How long can this go on? How can people take this crap, for how long? There's this small town girl crying to be let into the Roadies reality show and she says it's a stepping stone for her into fame, fortune and a Bollywood career. Come on, be real. Do you think you will become a Bollywood star with your thick accent and ordinary looks? 

And there's this baldie who shouts at contestants for no reason. He always shouts. It's his passion, his commitment, so it seems. He has made a big nakhra of his shouting for television and it seems they are all afraid of him and calls him "Sir." "You are a fraud" he tells one contestant on national television. 

The less said the better. So I rest my case.

I am @johnwriter on Twitter and John.Matthew on Facebook. I blog here.

The Sadness of Parting

Some things have to come to an end. And therefore comes the parting, the taking leave from friends with whom you have worked for three and a half years. The solution to this possibly tearing and mentally unhinging problem is that you have to see things as being finite, which runs it course when your association has reached a plateau of sorts and neither benefits from the linkage. When that happens - especially in the corporate world - it's better to pack up and leave, not that you have an option.

Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together?  I guess that wouldn't work.  Someone would leave.  Someone always leaves.  Then we would have to say good-bye.  I hate good-byes.  I know what I need.  I need more hellos. 

~Charles M. Schulz

In the characters I have created in fiction Mr. PK Koshy says goodbye to a government department he has worked for more than thirty years in the story "PK Koshy's Daily Routine." This short story is being published by Grey Oaks in their anthology titled "Bright Lights" soon. There's a book launch at Infinity Mall, Andheri, Bombay, on 19th at 6.30 p.m. Do come there if you can. Let's say hello. Another character Dinshaw Bandookwala is immeasurably sad when he leaves Pinnacle Constructions, a company he had sought to change and failed. Well, I mention these in passing.

So in the finiteness of things, goodbyes have to be said at one place and hellos have to be said in another. But friendships and associations will remain.

I am @johnwriter on Twitter and John.Matthew on Facebook. I blog here.

The Writer's Mirror - Musings

I often wonder why this hesitation, this holding back about my writing. I guess, it's my self consciousness, my diffidence which is to blame. I don't know if it is such a big debility, however, it does affect me. Four years after several drafts of Mr. Bandookwala, M.B.A., Harvard - my novel - I am a still reticent about it. How to bring it before the public, how to put it there so everyone can see.

I have done a reading to an intimate group of friends consisting of Caferati members. It went off well. I am glad. There were not many criticism, at least, not major ones. So what's holding me back? Also the recent affliction about which I wrote in this blog put a brake on my editing, which is lagging. Then I took up guitar lessons and since I am quite passionate about guitar music that has been consuming a lot of my time. I have progressed to chord progressions and hope I can accompany myself soon, I mean, singing songs composed by me, on my guitar.

Be that as it may. I bought myself a new desk from Central, Vashi. I will post a photo here soon. I bought it last week and still the guys haven't come to fix it, or fit it, or whatever they do. This desk I have been eyeing for a long time, wanting to sit before it's wide fold-down plank, spread my computer and my books, and my files around. The other one became too constricted and my copyholder just juts out of the table and I have absolutely no elbow room to speak about. In this there's enough space for my reference books, dictionaries, atlases and all the writers' paraphernalia I have accumulated over the years. So, in effect, I don't have to run a floor up to fetch that Malayalam dictionary, or the Hindi-English dictionary. Yeah, I still use my reference books a lot though I have a high-speed internet connection. Something to do with being old fashioned, methinks.

There's the launch next week (19th) of Grey Oaks' anthology "Bright Lights" which features my short story "PK Koshy's Daily Routine." The publishers have done a great job and I am heartened to see them promoting the book, actually a contest. More of this later. Adios Amigos, meanwhile.

I am @johnwriter on Twitter and John.Matthew on Facebook. I blog here.

Pico Iyer on the Long Sentence

Here's Pico Iyer on the joys of the long sentence, writing in the LA Times:

"I'm using longer and longer sentences as a small protest against — and attempt to rescue any readers I might have from — the bombardment of the moment."

Further he adds:

"The short sentence is the domain of uninflected talk-radio rants and shouting heads on TV who feel that qualification or subtlety is an assault on their integrity (and not, as it truly is, integrity's greatest adornment)."

I mostly use short sentence as a mark of simplicity in my writing. I also get confused by long sentences the sort that is, "a gradual inner movement that progresses through four parallel clauses, each of which, though legato, suggests a slightly different take on things," according to Iyer.

I am @johnwriter on Twitter and John.Matthew on Facebook. I blog here.

Jeet Thayil's Narcopolis

Here's Palash Krishna Mehrotra's review of Jeet Thayil's much-awaited novel "Narcopolis" published in Sunday Guardian. Excerpt:

"Thayil, a well-known poet, deploys his powers of description with some success. He is excellent when nailing druggy nihilism: 'You've got to face facts and the fact is that life is a joke, a fucking bad joke, or, no, a bad fucking joke.'; or the point at which pain recedes into the dark night and one is high, simply high: 'I am unplugged from the tick of metabolism; I am mineral.' Both smack and opium produce dream-like states in the user, and Thayil describes these abstractions with great felicity: 'Dreams leak from head to head; they travel between those who travel in the same direction, that is to say lovers, and those who share the bonds of intoxication and death.'"

Knowing, as I do, Jeet's lyrical prose as well as poetry I look forward to reading the novel. Another reason for my excitement is that it is about Bombay, a city about which I too am writing in my forthcoming novel. Jeet's Bombay seems dark and noir as mine is dissolute and corrupt.

I am @johnwriter on Twitter and John.Matthew on Facebook. I blog here.