Organisation Charts of Major IT Companies

This is what organisation charts of major IT companies look like, according to Jay Yarrow. Funny, isn't it? The one that induced chortles is Google and Microsoft. Just how can those behemoths survive with charts like that? Looks to me like house of cards. Also very tenuous. I wonder whether the entire tech bubble will go bust one day. Hm. That's pessimist me speaking.

Educate, enlighten me, please, please, please!

Do You Understand These Acronyms?

Heard this one-sided conversation today in a crowded compartment: "You patch me, we will catch again in office and we will touch base." Guess he is a poet by his talk, rhyming words: patch, catch and touch. What is he meaning to say?

By the by, we are using acronyms like mad. Modern world will be totally unrecognisable to a 19th century visitor, methinks. What is PFA? It's "please find attached." What is FYI? It's "for your information." Do we have to go to all those lengths. I wonder why (IWW).

ROFLAMAO is commonly used. It means "rolling on the floor laughing my ass off." Really? Are you doing that when you write that acronym? Hardly. You would be sitting stooped and smirking like a computer-addicted, keyboard junkie. If we roll on the floor, all our kilos would complain, I am sure.

Come on, let's be clear, let's be simple, there used to be a time when people stopped and smelled the roses. Now we find plastic roses probably smeared with deodorant. **Gross**

The Caine Prize for African Writing 2011

Just received The Caine Prize for African Writing 2011 anthology by mail. Thanks! Treat this post as an acknowledgment. I have received the last edition and it was such a treat to read. I hope this is an equally wonderful volume as the last.

There's such vividness and wondrous rootedness to the locality in African writing which is, however, lacking in the writing of my peers in India. Things come out in all earnest and rawness. After all, most of our literature is generated by the western educated (preferable non-resident) Indian. A Cambridge or Harvard education seems to be a sine qua non. Oh, you should hear the uppity accents in writer meets and writer soirees. True British, or "Friends-ish (the sitcom, I mean.)." I have written about this before, but nobody seems to care. Is it lack of talent, or our education system which is to blame? The other day I saw a man in train reading a Chetan Bhagat novel with his fingers pointing to the line he was reading. I guess he is a new convert to reading and he is starting with someone he can understand. This I like. My son also reads Chetan Bhagat and thinks he is a great writer. Hm. I don't think he can digest Salman Rushdie, or Amitav Ghosh.

I have tried to write with local themes and local speech - nothing great according to my son - but the results have been, at best, lukewarm.

Look forward to gorging on the stories in the present Caine Prize volume titled "To See the Mountain".

Interview with Author Zadie Smith

An interview with author Zadie Smith appears here on literateur.com. She is one of the leading contemporary voices in literature at the age of 35. Here's an excerpt for those interested in this writer:

I think I'm a control freak by nature, but one of the things I look for in other people's writing is the ability to confer freedom. That's what I want to be able to do myself. I like a writer who doesn't have to be in total control of how their readers react. More mystery, less explanation. All I can say is I'm working on it. But it's so hard! I really feel I'm just at the base of a huge mountain called 'learning how to write'. I'm still only 35. Learning to write is a task that takes up your whole life.

Must say being a control freak is a good thing for writers. Or, is it? 

Invited to Speak at Tedx Rourkela

Another Sunday, another day of rest. I went for my morning round of badminton only to realise that my friends had finished their quota for the day and were homeward bound. Gah! To think I was looking for a longer round of play today, being a holiday and all. Just a random thought: how many people neglect to do what they should be doing thinking it will happen, somehow or the other? I am one of them as I am sure are a lot of you.

With this in view, I accepted an invitation to speak at TEDx Rourkela. It's always a pleasure to be invited to speak at a Tedx event. You get to learn a lot. But Rourkela seemed a bit intimidating. I booked my train tickets online and lo and behold I am ready to go. Got to prepare on the topic of "Energise your Thought." A very tough subject to handle, but I am sure I can talk a lot on that. Actually, it isn't about talking a lot as talking something meaningful. I was actually energizing my thoughts about sharing my experiences with young people. My profile on their site is here.

Here's a quote I found from Lao Tzu:

Energizing  thoughts:

"Be careful what you water your dreams with.

Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dreams.

Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success"

If only we could water our dreams with optimism and solutions instead of worry and fear. My fears aren't what it used to be. I used to be a coward. I have now gotten rid of my fears and can perform better than I used to. I guess for performing one needs to concentrate and be prepared and not be afraid. 

Anyway, I have spoken in public and am a trained public speaker, which gives me confidence. So over the coming weeks I will be writing my presentation and rehearsing it before my wife. Alas, she is the only audience on whom I can inflict my creative spiel. I am thankful to her for the various improvements she has suggested in my previous appearances before audiences. Hope she does this time around too.

Sunil K. Poolani, Rest in Peace - an Obituary

I knew Sunil K. Poolani. He was a friend who had turned, sort of, adversary, due to circumstances beyond my control. It was sad to learn from Facebook that he was no more. So this is a sort of obituary as I didn't have any ill will towards him, no major ones. I wished him well, though from what I know of his life he led a stormy life. He would openly submit to dislike and be disliked by people. He once said, to effect, "I either love a person or hate him/her, no in between." I guess I was first the former and then the latter. I am the sort who wouldn't wish death on my worst enemy. I liked him for what he was: creative, hard working, a bit of a bad boy in his personal life. I liked his rebelliousness which reflected in his dealings with people and his writings. If a book is shit, he would call it shit, and would not find a way to nomenclature shit as "a lump of brown solid emitting a strong smell." That was it.

It all started when Sunil and I became members of a group called "Quill Writers," back in the nineties. It was started by writer Somi Ghosh and had as members: Sunil Nair, Merril Diniz, Sunil Poolani and self, among others. Of course, Somi Ghosh was sort of moderator and creator. We met a few times and kept in touch through a common mailing group. The group died a natural death when people moved and became interested in other things. It was then Sunil wrote a sort of pamphlet called, "The Rape of News," which was about the selling of space for news by newspapers. I contributed an article in this publication. The book was an immense success and sold in tens of thousands.

Sunil Poolani, rebel, writer, vanity publisher , he wanted to create history in the Indian publishing industry. But the end  was indeed sad. His addictions put paid to his dreams.

Sunil offered me a job in the online news channel he was working for. I accepted. He was my boss, sort of. We worked together and drank together, in those days when I still drank. (Nowadays I don't.) Later I realised he had a drinking problem. As our friendship blossomed, we shared a lot of information about each other and about our writing. He told me the story of his life. He was involved in the Naxal movement in Kerala, and did his masters in Malayalam literature. He had participated in bandhs and public demonstrations. (One of the writers he had to study in his masters program was my great-uncle and poet Mahakavi Puthencavu Mathan Tharakan.)

I showed him a few of my short stories and poems and told him about my novel, "The Love Song of Luke Varkey," which I was writing then. He was not satisfied with them and frankly told me about my drawbacks as a writer. I accepted it as constructive criticism, which was okay by me. As such, I was in a stage when any feedback was welcome and I was eager to improve and make progress. I had neglected my writing for some time and, I feel, I had regressed in whatever little talent I had nurtured.

It was then that he started his own publishing company – Frog Books. I happily bought his books and attended the launches, but felt that somehow vanity publishing didn't become him. It didn't have a future as the publisher would bring out a book and then would forget about it. I told him he should have struck out as an independent publisher who didn't charge his authors. Some of his authors showed their dissatisfaction and he was upset. I thought that profits can be made even if a publisher didn't charge his authors. I was, quite selfishly, I guess, trying to get him interested in my novel. Also since he was against paid news in newspapers, I didn't understand why he would want to charge his authors for publishing their books. Both smacked to me of a lack of ethics.

Then I wrote a feature for the online channel prior to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I felt that consensus on global warming had to be reached immediately to stop the inexorable march of global warming. Therefore I wrote a detailed article intending it to be published. My intention was to deal with it in several inter-linked articles within the feature as the internet didn't have the constraint of space. However, to my chagrin, Sunil refused to publish my article. I don't know what had gone wrong in our relationship. (In the close-knit world of Indian publishing, many a times, personal relationships override professional relationships.) I made several changes to the article as suggested by him, but he still adamantly refused to publish my article. I resigned in frustration.

After we parted ways, I used to keep in touch with him through Facebook and emails. I attended some of his book launches and bought his books. I felt, quite frankly, that they had low production values – cheap paper, dense text, bad covers – though the editing was of a high quality and order.

Then there came a measure of success in his business. He had rented an office and also had bought a flat, so I heard. He had also got divorced. It was then I tasted the bitterness of rejection as my novel "The Love Song of Luke Varkey" was rejected by all agents and publishers I had approached. Harper Collins which had shown interest also didn't respond after one year.

The distance grew. I used to see pictures of him on Facebook in which he would appear as an aloof individual. I didn't know the reasons. But I learnt from common friends that the drinking problem had got worse. Then came the news that he had suffered a heart attack. He died in his sleep, his brother was with him, so it appeared. No obituary appeared, the press for which he worked didn't report his death; nobody reacted except stray people on Facebook showing shock at the sudden demise of someone they knew.

As a writer and editor he was meticulous and dedicated. He had a racy and conversational style. He shared a lasting relationship with the late Malayalam writer and cartoonist O.V.Vijayan when he lived in Delhi. They would meet often. After Vijayan's death he wrote a touching obituary, something which I am aiming – rather ambitiously – with this. He hasn't left behind a big oeuvre of work except for the books he edited for Frog Books. Samples of his writing appear on his company blog: Frog Books. He had shown me a short story, a rather gruesome one, which he said was from an actual event in his life. I don't wish to reveal the contents, which could paint an adverse picture of him. He lived such a life, unpredictable, unrepentant, on the edge of social acceptability and propriety.

He was an atheist and a staunch leftist. He was very strong in his convictions and I found his strong opinions rather scary sometimes. For all the times we spent together, for the many occasions we drank together, for the vibes we shared during our working together, I would remember him as one who wouldn't compromise much on his set beliefs. Such people live very lonely lives. Many were the friendships he broke, unable to bring himself to be nice and non-committal when he didn't agree with something. In his book reviews he didn't hesitate to be nasty to writers if he didn't like their style. Perhaps, in these standardized times, when we seek to build a forced sort of consensus, or else, skirt issues when we do not agree with it, he – in fact people like him – are rare.

Though he didn't believe in an afterlife, may Sunil K. Poolani rest in peace!

Thought at Random, Wistfully Nostalgic

Short take today. Random thoughts written in haste. Guess, you can make out. My head is really hitting the keyboard and the hands refuse to co-operate. It could be that the tip of the nose did the writing judging by the style and syntax. Anyways, joking, only, no? Tired-shired, is so much becoming no? Had to release five ads to five publications today and it was totally energy sapping, what with the agency being new and all that. True, I don't like discussing working life here, but it gets in through the cracks, what to do. But I like the work, coming as I do from a publishing background. 

Decided I would write the obituary for Sunil K. Poolani who died recently. He was a friend and former colleague. It will appear here tomorrow. Wrote it, then edited it, and then edited it again. Though we had our differences, he didn't have to die. I wouldn't wish death on anyone. Brings one to the question of death. Death makes even the toughest man quiver like jelly. 

A man I had known for some time died when he was told he had a kidney condition. People die for the wrong reasons, unable to bear the burden of life. But if you take life as light as a flower bud, flowing with it and not disturbing the turbulence, then life can be one hell of an interesting place. I searched for a poem and here's what I found:

There are some flower's so sweet and pure, 
Flower's which we should all adore.
So sweet and strong they stand alone
So graceful have these flower's grown.

Hm. Must say it has some hidden meaning somewhere. 

Non-fiction Book Civilization: the West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

In Civilization: the West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson, the author argues that the West succeeded because it had certain killer application (as in killer apps, commonly referred to by programming geeks). These are:

1. Firstly, competition that gave the West a major military and technical advantage
2. Secondly, science, almost completely Euro-centred from Copernicus to Newton
3. Thirdly, safety of property, which he argues was the basis of the American Revolution
4. Medicine, the fourth, was beneficial to the West but also to its colonies
5. The fifth, consumer society, which is vital because workers were also consumers who would themselves provide the demand for the output of the Industrial Revolution
6. Ferguson's sixth and last "killer application" is Protestant work ethics.

So, what Indian and the rest of the world didn't have was competition, property, and Protestant work ethics. Why this blogger thinks thusly is because medicine and science benefited entire humanity. What about religion? Was it not one of the reasons the West thought they were superior than the rest?

Ferguson leaves many questions unanswered. Would like to take a look at the book though.

The Man Who Has Licence to Turn Down Steve Jobs' Offer

This is a classic. Look at his style, his verve, his dynamism that had women swooning in the aisles (of theatres I mean). Look at the classic style of the letterhead. Sean Connery is known to be the best James Bond that ever was. And he had no need for Steve Jobs' apple gizmos, though he loved Quartermaster's (Mr. Q in short) gadgets very much. And he had a certain thing for Ms. Moneypenny, but not for the filthy lucre (see picture).

When Indian stars are mooching and scrounging for endorsement deals here's a classy actor turning down, hold your breath, Steve Jobs himself. I just can't believe it. Even Steve Jobs has to face rejection. What a nice thought!

Going Native: Gandhi’s Relationship with Western Women by Thomas Weber

Gandhi is the topic of the season going by another book on him: Going Native: Gandhi's Relationship with Western Women by Thomas Weber. It is self explanatory and came to me via this book review in Outlook.

Excerpt from the review by Tridip Suhrud:

Thomas Weber is one of those rare scholars who wrote the most authoritative account of the Dandi March, gave a history of the Shanti Sena and studied the impact of Gandhian ideals in movements such as Chipko. This enabled him to understand the people around Gandhi who influenced him and were in turn influenced by him—Gandhi both as a disciple and a mentor.