03 September 2010
23 June 2010
Bhopal: a lesson in remembering
Things don’t right themselves with the passage of time, unless they are righted. And the way they are righted, is, first, you say sorry. Next, you put things in place and clean up. Thirdly, you learn and remember not to forget.
Bhopal is still all wrong, any which way you look at it. No one has said sorry, no one has mopped up the mess that is the Union Carbide factory, no one has put things in place for the victims. Lastly, nothing has been learned and we have forgotten to remember.
Just because it was all 25 years ago, doesn’t put a distance between us and the poison gas that can be a part of our lives, too, at any time, any place. Think about it, look around you, and you will realize that things have hardly changed when it comes to governmental apathy, corporate cruelty, and general thick-skinnedness of everyone concerned.
The TV channels have taken it upon themselves to set one thing right: the media’s treatment of the whole tragedy. But, far from reassuring me about a sound press, it makes me think if trial- and sometimes government-by-media is our only way out, God help those who are at the receiving end of the media’s cold shoulder.
Yet, the Bhopal ghost couldn’t have reappeared at a better time, when the US is busy being self-righteous and gladly pointing fingers at BP. What did the US government do to penalize Union Carbide? How many billions did it ask Warren Anderson’s company to pay up?
But the US’ hypocrisy is no reason to let off the Indian government easily. The contamination of JP Nagar in Bhopal started right from the day Carbide began operations in 1971 and was a documented fact by 1981. In fact, it is this mess that will take up the thousands of crores to clean up.
And, as we all know, such a violation of our earth and water is commonplace throughout our country.
The real wars that need to be fought are well within the border, they need to be fought for the earth, the air, and the water. But where do we begin..? We all carry a little of Bhopal in our lungs.
02 June 2010
A point is proved
The Trinamool Congress’ victory in the West Bengal civic polls is not an overnight event. It was cooking all along, when the apoliticians were busy sighing that even if they wanted to vote for someone apart from the CPM, there was no alternative; when the ruling media houses of the land went a step further than the CPM itself in Mamata-bashing or Mamata-ignoring.
Today, the people’s movement symbolized by the Trinamool victory has simply become so huge that it cannot be ignored any more. The ‘rabble-rouser’ has become the mass leader. The jeering media houses have become cheer(ing)leaders and are jostling each other for a Mamata-byte.
Do things really remain the same the more they change?
Personally, Mamata’s journey is very inspiring. One person, a woman at that, took on the entire might of a huge near-monolithic structure called the CPM, despite even physical attacks, in an almost hopeless scene – if this is not the stuff of legends, what is?
Her fight gives you the strength to believe in the impossible. In an age where you find few political heroes, Mamata stands tall. Any further electoral victories will not be ‘surprising’, as the TV channels put it. She has proved her point.
My name is Red
A more comprehensive review (and one that I liked) is here.
Am making a very, very brief note, of course:
The tussle between tradition and individuality or the attack of Western influence is at the heart of the book. So, is a murder mystery, that is weaved through till the very end.
But tradition, too, originated once perhaps as a streak of individuality and then got institutionalized. The fear that the chief royal miniaturist shows in the book towards the Western trend of portraiture, is the age-old fear against anything new that has the potential to shake up your world.
It got me thinking about the place of art in Islam. I’d love to do further reading on this. Any suggestions?
02 April 2010
How death happens
Hmm, this has almost become a quarterly blog. Well, what can I say? So many things have been happening workwise that I should say I’m lucky to be able to breathe.
There were a couple of things that I sorely wanted to blog about.
Like the crow nest in front of my office which will perhaps never be filled. Two crows were trying to build a nest since quite a few days. There was nothing that couldn’t find a place in their nest. Twigs were passé, they even wanted to put a bucket handle up there. I have no idea about structural design, but am pretty sure the bucket handle just wouldn’t have fit in the fragile nest.
And, in the end, it was the nest that killed one of the crows. They had put in a lot of plastic thread in there, and, I don’t know how it happened, but yesterday I saw the crow dangling from the branch of the tree, still bound to its nest by the nylon string.
Is this what they mean, when they say, life is what happens to you when you are busy planning other things? Sometimes, death happens that way, too.
Like it happened at Stephen Court. I drove past it a week ago, and the building looked gaunt, violated, and out of place on shiny, cushy Park Street. What’ll we do about tribals being shot down in some remote village when we can’t get things right in the heart of this metropolis?
Kolkata is full of such Stephen Courts, so where will you even begin? They pay much less rent than the prevailing market rates and the building goes to waste. So, people walk past dangling wire bushes and up creaky staircases, thinking some idiot somewhere is responsible for all this. The owners of the building are nameless, perhaps dead, even, and everyone else continues in a state of inertia (and some false pride to do with heritage buildings) all too common in Communist Bengal.
This is not the first major fire in the city’s recent history, and something tells me, it’s not the last, either.
There were a couple of things that I sorely wanted to blog about.
Like the crow nest in front of my office which will perhaps never be filled. Two crows were trying to build a nest since quite a few days. There was nothing that couldn’t find a place in their nest. Twigs were passé, they even wanted to put a bucket handle up there. I have no idea about structural design, but am pretty sure the bucket handle just wouldn’t have fit in the fragile nest.
And, in the end, it was the nest that killed one of the crows. They had put in a lot of plastic thread in there, and, I don’t know how it happened, but yesterday I saw the crow dangling from the branch of the tree, still bound to its nest by the nylon string.
Is this what they mean, when they say, life is what happens to you when you are busy planning other things? Sometimes, death happens that way, too.
Like it happened at Stephen Court. I drove past it a week ago, and the building looked gaunt, violated, and out of place on shiny, cushy Park Street. What’ll we do about tribals being shot down in some remote village when we can’t get things right in the heart of this metropolis?
Kolkata is full of such Stephen Courts, so where will you even begin? They pay much less rent than the prevailing market rates and the building goes to waste. So, people walk past dangling wire bushes and up creaky staircases, thinking some idiot somewhere is responsible for all this. The owners of the building are nameless, perhaps dead, even, and everyone else continues in a state of inertia (and some false pride to do with heritage buildings) all too common in Communist Bengal.
This is not the first major fire in the city’s recent history, and something tells me, it’s not the last, either.
04 January 2010
Tavern news
A couple of days ago, The Telegraph had this on the front page: Last meal at NY’s Tavern on the Green.
And in spite of globalization and shrinking virtual worlds, I didn’t relate to this story. It is not as much as about the restaurant, as it is about the correspondent’s personal nostalgia about the biggies he met and the scoops he got there. Ho-hum.
Secondly, why is it on the front page? Yes, they could have been short of Page 1-ish stories, it being 1 Jan and all, but what about the story about 70 persons killed by a suicide bomber in neighbouring Pakistan? Maybe, bombings have become routine in Pakistan, but it’s still no excuse for the NY restaurant story to be prioritized. Oh, but then, maybe the enlightened editors at The Telegraph didn’t want to spoil the New Year cheer. Well, that’s understandable.
Thirdly, the story deals with the Tavern only superficially, and soon turns into a long-drawn treatise on why the correspondent thinks the recession in the US is far from over. The economy's impact on the restaurant definitely needed to be brought up in the story, but not at the cost of the story. There are no quotes from the restaurant regulars, the owners, in fact the entire story has no quotes at all. Neither is there any mention about how it looked on its last day, did they have anything special on the menu, nada.
And, we are still talking about a restaurant here.
And in spite of globalization and shrinking virtual worlds, I didn’t relate to this story. It is not as much as about the restaurant, as it is about the correspondent’s personal nostalgia about the biggies he met and the scoops he got there. Ho-hum.
Secondly, why is it on the front page? Yes, they could have been short of Page 1-ish stories, it being 1 Jan and all, but what about the story about 70 persons killed by a suicide bomber in neighbouring Pakistan? Maybe, bombings have become routine in Pakistan, but it’s still no excuse for the NY restaurant story to be prioritized. Oh, but then, maybe the enlightened editors at The Telegraph didn’t want to spoil the New Year cheer. Well, that’s understandable.
Thirdly, the story deals with the Tavern only superficially, and soon turns into a long-drawn treatise on why the correspondent thinks the recession in the US is far from over. The economy's impact on the restaurant definitely needed to be brought up in the story, but not at the cost of the story. There are no quotes from the restaurant regulars, the owners, in fact the entire story has no quotes at all. Neither is there any mention about how it looked on its last day, did they have anything special on the menu, nada.
And, we are still talking about a restaurant here.
02 January 2010
Shantaram
I recently read Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. After a long, long time, this was a book that had me licking for more from Page 1.
I have often thought that when you meet the work of a true artist, you get the feeling that he/she knows you, knows something about you that can make you smile or cry a tear. They know something about you that you never bothered to discover. I got this feeling when I read Shantaram.
Roberts writes of a love so intense that everyone can’t know or comprehend and makes one wary of the pain that must invariably accompany such searing love. He writes of the human heart’s incredible ability to hope and the will to fight through impossible circumstances.
Yes, at times, the book flows rather too well, events in the book are too much in harmony with each other. For instance, Ulla appears with movie-like precision in the plot. Perhaps, this was intentional to make it look more like a work of fiction, something made up, and not autobiographical.
The way he puts words to feelings caught my breath. Simply brilliant. My copy of the book is marked up in so many places for the words I loved, like, “But wisdom, in one sense, is the opposite of love. Love survives in us precisely because it isn’t wise,” or, “a prairie of longing”.
All the things that matter in life – love, friendship, integrity, and even death – Roberts’s involvement with each is touching. I loved this book for being so unabashed about its sentimentality, even as it takes us through the lanes of organized crime in Mumbai. So much in the book is so incredible like Roberts’s escape from the high-security prison in the middle of the day. I have not read a book that’s as compelling as this and is yet a literary masterpiece at the same time. Nothing could match up to the pulse of this book. And all, written in a way to make you pause and look up and think for a long time.
I can’t wait to watch the movie, what with Johnny Depp and all. But it can never be better than the book, of course.
30 December 2009
Give me another chance, I wanna grow up once again
I’m so glad I didn’t take Pratim Gupta seriously.
3 Idiots made me laugh heartily and unexpectedly cry the next moment. Maybe because am not an arty-farty type, thank God for that. But it wasn’t just me. After a long, long time, I saw an entire hall roaring with laughter and then fall suddenly silent.
Why indulge in rat races, let’s leave it to the rats, eh? The subject of Aamir’s movie has long begged representation. Every year, the moment after results of Class X or Class XII are announced, you can brace up for news of kids killing themselves. But, we’re all way too numbed up towards it.
I remember once participating in a seminar for teachers, where my teacher said that a child’s imagination should not be ‘corrected’, or tampered with. And, a teacher simply got up and asked, ‘What’s the main point?’
I have met some very different teachers in my life. One of them had a way of teaching through anecdotes and life experiences. I absolutely loved his classes and learned so much about human behaviour from him. But the last time I went to Bangalore, he said his current students had complained about his teaching methods. They didn’t like it that he went ‘off topic’!
I guess a movie has its limitations and it’s difficult to touch all aspects of an issue and, of course, the kind of teachers that I have met are really a minority, outcastes even. But the point is that by the time kids reach college, they have already become part of the system like Chatur, the Silencer. They may not be open to and indeed may find it very difficult to adapt to a system that encourages them to think rather than score.
Anyway, getting back to the movie, yes, there are the usual college scenes like ragging, a Hitler-type principal, but heck, this is a movie about college kids. What did you expect to see? Yogis standing on their heads? I guess not.
But I wouldn’t have defended the movie, if not for the lively, clean, and smart humour weaved into it. The balatkaar speech takes the cake, of course.
The 3 Idiots have done a good job and really can’t say who’s better than whom. All’s well with the songs, they’re very hummable. But I’m surprised that Kareena snuck in some bad acting, given so little time she had in the movie.
All in all, I vote for the movie and urge the janata to go see it. And, after you’re done laughing, don’t get to keeping up with the Joneses all over again.
Aargh, there's more I could write, but have to cook dinner :(
26 October 2009
The new way to work: my new way to live
(Note to Sihikahi regulars: You're already familiar with most of the stuff of this post. This is my entry to Elance's 'The New Way to Work' contest, so you guys can skip it.)
I chose to work on my own from the comfort and distractions of my home a little less than two years ago.
This new way to work, for me, is an affirmation of faith in me, as a writer and editor who can make it on her own. My husband, Lincoln, propelled me towards this way of working. If not for his conviction in my abilities, I’d still be slogging it out for someone else.
I call it an affirmation of faith in myself because when I took the leap, and I must term it so, I had no definite plan, no potential jobs on the horizon… nothing.
Instead, what I did have for certain was a number of EMIs knocking at my door every month, and the reality of living in a city which didn’t have and doesn’t have too many good opportunities for a writer and editor.
I began bidding on Elance last June. I had almost run out of my connects quota and hope, when I got my first break. I actually ran around the house, called my mother, and was pretty much delirious with joy.
Later, I worked as a content manager for a Texas-based medical tourism company and cloud commuted for nearly a year. I am now active on Elance and in the process of setting up my firm. More about that here.
This post is about the way ahead: the new way. And I love it. But as with things/persons you love in life, there is a bit of a compromise, a bit of putting up with things you don’t like, and a lot of struggle. Some of the tough things about working on my own are:
No chatter at the water cooler: I work alone, so I have no colleagues to catch up with on office gossip. So, it gets boring sometimes, but, heck, there is no office politics to put up with either.
No paychecks: Freelancing , especially in India, is not for the weak-hearted. A few friends have told me they envy the fact that I can choose the day and time to go out and do my thing. I don’t have to look over my shoulder in fear of the boss. I can crank up the volume when they play my song on the radio, and so on. But, it’s not all milk and honey. Nothing is. I am working harder now than ever before. Of course, I am also enjoying my work than ever before. But I ask my friends who envy me, if they will venture out into the world of no paychecks. I have, so I get my privileges.
Discrimination, or the other end of being lowballed: On Elance discussion forums, I have come across many providers cribbing about how Indian providers’ lowballing affects their chances. The cost of living is comparatively low in India, hence our bids are going to be lower than, say, that of our American counterparts. You have to accept that. But there are all kinds of Indian providers, just as there are, I am sure, good, bad, and ugly from the First World. So, while there are Indian providers who will work at $2/per article or whatever, I don’t belong to that category. Yet, I regularly get invites for projects with ridiculous budgets and I regularly turn them down. Just because I am an Indian provider, I find it absurd that people accept me to work for a pittance. Obviously, they are not after quality, so, no thanks, I’d rather do without your business.
Back in India, working from home was not a lucrative position till recently. But I think that’s changing slowly. My Indian clients, though I don’t have too many of them, pay me, more or less, on par with my clients from abroad, and are quite easy to work with. I wouldn’t yet say the market for independent providers of content is mature in India. I think that’ll take some time.
And some of the challenges are:
Organizing yourself: This is the biggest challenge for anyone setting out independently. You are your own boss, your time is yours, and your time is your money. So, unless you plan well, stay organized and focused, the day will be gone before you know and you won’t have much done. Which means, a corresponding decrease in revenue. Ouch. The first couple of months, I used to do a little of this and a little of that. I ended up tired, out of breath. Now, if it’s two hours for a certain project, it’s two hours of focused work on that project and not a minute more. This has helped me stay in control.
Staying positive: That’s the second biggest challenge. Jobs pour in sometimes, and at other times there is a pause. Some clients are absolute dears, others are, well, let’s say they come in all shapes. And you’ve got to stay positive amidst everything. Initially, this was difficult. If a week went past without anything working out, I would start fretting. But with time and my pile-up of experience, I am more patient now and confident that it will work out.
Elance has a huge role to play in shaping up my new way to work, and live. I love its transparency and range of jobs to choose from. Tough as it is to survive on your own, it would be hundred times more difficult without an enabling platform such as Elance.
Till now, I have worked on content writing, editing, page layout, and SEO assignments via Elance. What I am now eager to explore is the fiction and travel domains, be it writing/ghostwriting or editing it.
A world of possibilities has opened up to me, thanks to the new way to work. And I am thankful to my family and Elance for being a part of this in such a positive way.
My Elance profile
Name: Vijayalaxmi Hegde
Mail: vijayalaxmi dot hegde at gmail dot com
I chose to work on my own from the comfort and distractions of my home a little less than two years ago.
This new way to work, for me, is an affirmation of faith in me, as a writer and editor who can make it on her own. My husband, Lincoln, propelled me towards this way of working. If not for his conviction in my abilities, I’d still be slogging it out for someone else.
I call it an affirmation of faith in myself because when I took the leap, and I must term it so, I had no definite plan, no potential jobs on the horizon… nothing.
Instead, what I did have for certain was a number of EMIs knocking at my door every month, and the reality of living in a city which didn’t have and doesn’t have too many good opportunities for a writer and editor.
I began bidding on Elance last June. I had almost run out of my connects quota and hope, when I got my first break. I actually ran around the house, called my mother, and was pretty much delirious with joy.
Later, I worked as a content manager for a Texas-based medical tourism company and cloud commuted for nearly a year. I am now active on Elance and in the process of setting up my firm. More about that here.
This post is about the way ahead: the new way. And I love it. But as with things/persons you love in life, there is a bit of a compromise, a bit of putting up with things you don’t like, and a lot of struggle. Some of the tough things about working on my own are:
No chatter at the water cooler: I work alone, so I have no colleagues to catch up with on office gossip. So, it gets boring sometimes, but, heck, there is no office politics to put up with either.
No paychecks: Freelancing , especially in India, is not for the weak-hearted. A few friends have told me they envy the fact that I can choose the day and time to go out and do my thing. I don’t have to look over my shoulder in fear of the boss. I can crank up the volume when they play my song on the radio, and so on. But, it’s not all milk and honey. Nothing is. I am working harder now than ever before. Of course, I am also enjoying my work than ever before. But I ask my friends who envy me, if they will venture out into the world of no paychecks. I have, so I get my privileges.
Discrimination, or the other end of being lowballed: On Elance discussion forums, I have come across many providers cribbing about how Indian providers’ lowballing affects their chances. The cost of living is comparatively low in India, hence our bids are going to be lower than, say, that of our American counterparts. You have to accept that. But there are all kinds of Indian providers, just as there are, I am sure, good, bad, and ugly from the First World. So, while there are Indian providers who will work at $2/per article or whatever, I don’t belong to that category. Yet, I regularly get invites for projects with ridiculous budgets and I regularly turn them down. Just because I am an Indian provider, I find it absurd that people accept me to work for a pittance. Obviously, they are not after quality, so, no thanks, I’d rather do without your business.
Back in India, working from home was not a lucrative position till recently. But I think that’s changing slowly. My Indian clients, though I don’t have too many of them, pay me, more or less, on par with my clients from abroad, and are quite easy to work with. I wouldn’t yet say the market for independent providers of content is mature in India. I think that’ll take some time.
And some of the challenges are:
Organizing yourself: This is the biggest challenge for anyone setting out independently. You are your own boss, your time is yours, and your time is your money. So, unless you plan well, stay organized and focused, the day will be gone before you know and you won’t have much done. Which means, a corresponding decrease in revenue. Ouch. The first couple of months, I used to do a little of this and a little of that. I ended up tired, out of breath. Now, if it’s two hours for a certain project, it’s two hours of focused work on that project and not a minute more. This has helped me stay in control.
Staying positive: That’s the second biggest challenge. Jobs pour in sometimes, and at other times there is a pause. Some clients are absolute dears, others are, well, let’s say they come in all shapes. And you’ve got to stay positive amidst everything. Initially, this was difficult. If a week went past without anything working out, I would start fretting. But with time and my pile-up of experience, I am more patient now and confident that it will work out.
Elance has a huge role to play in shaping up my new way to work, and live. I love its transparency and range of jobs to choose from. Tough as it is to survive on your own, it would be hundred times more difficult without an enabling platform such as Elance.
Till now, I have worked on content writing, editing, page layout, and SEO assignments via Elance. What I am now eager to explore is the fiction and travel domains, be it writing/ghostwriting or editing it.
A world of possibilities has opened up to me, thanks to the new way to work. And I am thankful to my family and Elance for being a part of this in such a positive way.
My Elance profile
Name: Vijayalaxmi Hegde
Mail: vijayalaxmi dot hegde at gmail dot com
08 August 2009
Why do we use cliches?
A programmer friend, who is on a sort of a sabbatical, was wondering if he could code as well as he did despite his long break from work. This prompted me to think if one could ever forget writing, too.
I don't think so. I feel writing is a process that helps you evolve and your writing, too, keeps constantly evolving. Writing exercises and involves the brain, hence it is not a task we can relegate to our reflexes.
In fact, communicating through the written word is quite a complex process. Vague, half-formed thoughts from the recesses of our brain have to be dressed-up and presented in a human language. That is not a skill Nature endowed us with.
Building the connect between the thought and the text does come easy if your thought is strong, full-bodied. At other times, writing something down can clear up fuzzy thoughts and give you direction.
It is the complexity of the writing process that makes people reach out to crutches: second-hand or automatic expressions. I've no argument with people who're happy with someone else doing the talking for them, but they will definitely find it difficult to be heard and understood.
People who use clichés or buzzwords like leverage, bandwidth, paradigm shift, legalese and commercialese like whereas, in receipt of, hereof are usually the most vocal against plain language. Their argument for gobbledygook is that everyone else is using them, and they are only fitting in.
This urge to conform is certainly strong, but the other reason why people are initially resistant to writing in plain language is that it’s actually not easy. We are often so accustomed to using borrowed expressions or conforming to a particular way of writing, that we are not familiar with our own voice.
Of course, not everyone who writes wishes to communicate. Lawyers are one such species of people.
But if you are writing to be understood, guard against use of clichés and gobbledygook. People have heard all the clichés there are to be heard, but they are really keen to know what it is that you have to say. Of course, if you've nothing to say, you better not say it.
I don't think so. I feel writing is a process that helps you evolve and your writing, too, keeps constantly evolving. Writing exercises and involves the brain, hence it is not a task we can relegate to our reflexes.
In fact, communicating through the written word is quite a complex process. Vague, half-formed thoughts from the recesses of our brain have to be dressed-up and presented in a human language. That is not a skill Nature endowed us with.
Building the connect between the thought and the text does come easy if your thought is strong, full-bodied. At other times, writing something down can clear up fuzzy thoughts and give you direction.
It is the complexity of the writing process that makes people reach out to crutches: second-hand or automatic expressions. I've no argument with people who're happy with someone else doing the talking for them, but they will definitely find it difficult to be heard and understood.
People who use clichés or buzzwords like leverage, bandwidth, paradigm shift, legalese and commercialese like whereas, in receipt of, hereof are usually the most vocal against plain language. Their argument for gobbledygook is that everyone else is using them, and they are only fitting in.
This urge to conform is certainly strong, but the other reason why people are initially resistant to writing in plain language is that it’s actually not easy. We are often so accustomed to using borrowed expressions or conforming to a particular way of writing, that we are not familiar with our own voice.
Of course, not everyone who writes wishes to communicate. Lawyers are one such species of people.
But if you are writing to be understood, guard against use of clichés and gobbledygook. People have heard all the clichés there are to be heard, but they are really keen to know what it is that you have to say. Of course, if you've nothing to say, you better not say it.
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