Penguin India's INDIAN ESSENTIALS

PENGUIN INDIA recently published a collection of essays under the title INDIAN ESSENTIALS

I was one of twenty authors invited to write an essay for the book and the subject suggested to me was "commuting in India". I wrote my piece several years ago and was quite pleased with it, so I thought I'd post a couple of excerpts here as a teaser trailer. If you want to read the complete piece, you'll have to buy the book!


THE TRAVELLER

Right until the moment that I sat down to write my piece for this collection of essays, I had expected to make a patchwork quilt of some fifty years of train journeys, from early childhood to now. Then I opened a new file on my laptop and in that instant the gently bubbling spring of memories changed into a trickle of stale anecdotes about lost tickets, colourful fellow passengers and the time I threw up all the way from Madras to Bombay courtesy my mother's mutton sandwiches. I’ve told these stories dozens of times and though they’re reasonably entertaining when accompanied by cheese sandwiches and tepid coffee, they're not exactly marble-plaque material.

....

So I decided to fashion an amusement from scratch, using myself as fall-gal and the Indian Railways as my stage. I decided to go on an actual trip from Delhi to Madras, on the Rajdhani, but to treat it as if it were an amalgam of all my previous trips.

...

Naturally, then, my first priority was to create a disguise for myself. Stage magicians will tell you that the main part of a successful trick is misdirection - drawing attention away from the mechanics of the trick by doing something just outside the plane of intention. With this in mind, I did two things. The first was that I bought myself a set of clothes of the kind that I never normally wear: a salwar-kurta ‘suit’ made out of cheap shiny cloth, mud-brown in colour, with an all-over print of dull red flowers. On my feet I wore a pair of vomit-pink slippers, one size too small and I took care to paint my toe nails metallic sea green two weeks in advance of the journey, so that by the time I boarded the train my feet looked moth-eaten and diseased.

My second move was to shave my hair off.

My reason for taking this drastic step was simple: I didn't have the time or inclination to grow my hair out, yet a woman with short-cropped hair not only suggests that she makes regular trips to a hairdresser but also that she has the money and leisure to pay for such indulgences. By contrast, a shaven head, in India, instantly communicates a message of traditional values, self-sacrifice and most importantly, loss. A woman will not normally remove her hair except for sober reasons - the loss of a spouse, catastrophic illness, mental derangement, louse-infestation or in quest of a favour from the gods. Whatever the cause, nobody doubts the credentials of a tonsuree. The very nakedness suggests an exposure to the elements and an absolute lack of secrets that is pitiable and for that reason, disarming.

...

‘Excuse me?’ I said.

Both men looked up. They were mismatched in the way of famous comedy pairs, Laurel and Hardy or Tom and Jerry —something intrinsically funny about the differences between them. The tall, broad one said, ‘Yes?’ while the smaller, more delicate one just nodded, with his head cocked to one side.

My immediate impression was that they were both young, perhaps in their twenties. Travelling salesmen was my first guess regarding their careers, but they might just as well have been cousins going home for a clan gathering or graduate students taking a Puja break. They were dressed decently, but without any flair. In the dim light all I could see was that they were clean-shaven, wearing long-sleeved shirts, with their luggage stowed neatly under their seats. The big one’s hair rose up in a poll of black curls on top of his head while the smaller man’s hair was straight and slicked back, parted on one side: a large hearty rabbit and a small nervous mongoose.

‘I’m doing a survey,’ I said. ‘Is it all right if I ask a few questions?’

‘Sure, sure,’ said Rabbit, as he shifted his bulk aside very slightly, as if to make
space for me, except that there was plenty of space and therefore no real need for him to shift.

‘- usually, we are the ones asking the questions,’ said Mongoose, unexpectedly. ‘Never mind! We will give the answers this time.’ He said this with a straight face, neither smiling nor frowning. There was something melancholy in his sobriety.

We were all speaking in English, though theirs was more accented than mine.

I said, ‘Oh! Does that mean you’re … ?’

‘- media consultants,’ said Rabbit, turning the palm of his right hand up, as if this were a self-evident fact. Something in the way he performed this gesture made me want to giggle.

‘We do market surveys,’ said Mongoose, nodding morosely.

‘Really!’ I said, smiling too brightly. There are certain circumstances which cause me to laugh uncontrollably. I produce a loud, chuckling rattle - sub-machine-gun with a touch of hyena - that is difficult to turn off once it gets started. I grow breathless, my sides ache and my eyes stream with tears. The fits usually occur when there is an obvious trigger, such as a comedy film or the company of friends, but sometimes, as on this occasion, the hysteria rises inside me like a volcano of soap bubbles, for no clear reason at all. An image flashed before my eyes, of me with my shaven head and green-painted toe-nails falling off my seat howling with laughter, as the two media consultants looking on, puzzled and a little pained. I clamped my hand across my mouth, hoping they wouldn’t notice.

‘How about you?’ asked Mongoose. ‘You are in survey business also?’
Further images were flashing in my head: scenes from Peter Sellers’ movies, of Herbert Lom’s face starting to twitch as crazed cackles leak out of him. I feared something similar was about to happen to me. I began massaging my cheeks as if I was in pain.

‘Uhh,’ I stammered, ‘not really, no. I’m - I'm a journalist -’

‘You should let her ask the questions,’ said Rabbit to Mongoose, in a reproachful tone.

The smaller man turned towards me, his eyes trusting and morose. ‘Please, Ma’am, you go ahead and ask. We will tell you anything.’

I was very grateful for the relative darkness of their cubicle. Sucking in a deep breath, so that the giggles were pushed back down into my stomach, I said, ‘I’m doing a series of articles about reincarnation. Maybe the two of you have some interesting stories to tell me?’

There was a brief silence. Rabbit cleared his throat and shifted slightly in his seat. Looking straight ahead as if reciting a passage he had memorized, he said,

‘Well … speaking for myself alone, I can say I take six eggs once a day.’

‘Eggs?’ I asked, unsure of what I’d heard.

‘Hard boiled,’ he said, thinking that I’d wanted clarification.

Mongoose was shaking his head from side to side. ‘He refuses to listen. I have told him so many times, but still he eats them. He says it is a question of faith.’

‘Just a moment,’ I said. ‘Why are we talking about food?’

‘You asked about it, so I am telling,’ said Rabbit, turning his palm over once more.

‘It is true,’ said Mongoose. ‘We have been travelling together on field trips for three years. He takes six eggs every night before dinner -’

‘I’m sorry but … what do eggs have to do with reincarnation?’ I had gone to a stage beyond laughter now. There was a floating sensation in my head, as if my giggles had transferred themselves to my sinuses without pausing to be released along the way.

‘You can read it in the papers every day,’ sighed Rabbit, raising his eyes to the ceiling with a long-suffering expression. ‘Some people are dying, some people are getting attacks. Excess of eggs leads to catharsis of the hearteries - leading to incarnation. But I am still eating my six eggs a day because … because … it is my belief!’ He closed his eyes.

‘No one can help him,’ whispered Mongoose, ‘no one’. He seemed on the verge of tears.

I got to my feet, knowing that I would explode if I remained in their company a second longer.
‘Thank you!’ I managed, before I fled. ‘You’ve been very informative!’

Excellent Article

This morning I woke up unnaturally early, thinking: I need to use my blog in a more pro-active way. A blog is an extraordinary vehicle, if you stop and think about it, for putting private ideas and interior moments right out there where everyone/anyone can see them. But most of us use our blogs for hanging out our wet hankies and maybe passing around links that have done the tour of the universe half a dozen times already.

So anyway, when I got up and looked at e-mail the first thing I read was this article by Dr DAVID MICHAEL GREEN, Associate Professor of Political Science, Hofstra University and broad-spectrum commentator. He posts regularly to his web-site, THE REGRESSIVE ANTIDOTE and I'm subscribed to his automatic mail-out list.

It seemed like the ideal thing to post here on a day which began on a sober, I'm-not-doing-enough-with-my-life-note. Go click! It'll kick-start your day. Or what remains of your day. Or light up your evening. Or ... whatever.

On Self Censorship

Some of you may have visited this blog in the past couple of days and seen a link, which I have now removed, to a website called ... ummm ... well, obviously if I say what it is that'll be pretty much the same as posting a link to it. No-one asked me to remove it, but on reflection I decided it was kinder and safer to avoid displaying it here, even though the article (in the New Yorker) was/is fascinating and even though I will still visit the site now and then.

It's NOT a porn site, but then again, it's quite a bit like one, so I thought: nah. I think it's funny and very bizarre but then again, lots of people I know might find it (a) disgusting (b) child-unfriendly. I don't think I normally receive visits from Persons of the Youthful Persuasion, but then again, it's always possible that someone young strays here from TULIKA's website. So I decided to err on the side of being super cautious.

Hmmm. I feel the weight of every single gray hair on my head ...

May 14th

That was the view from the upstairs window in my friends' home in Vermont -- barely two weeks ago. It snowed two feet in one day. Two days later, emerald green meadows speckled with brilliant yellow dandelions were all that could be seen in every direction.

But that was 2 weeks ago, and since then I have been trotting about -- I had another night in Lebanon and a wonderful dinner, in terms of company, conversation and food -- returned to Boston the next day and spent two nights at my niece's new home in Randolph and then two nights at the Fairmont, the hotel my sister was staying in while attending a medical conference. I hadn't planned to be there for two days, but that's how it worked out, because the volcano began sputtering again and my flight was delayed by two hours. That meant I'd miss my connecting flight through Frankfurt, so I opted to take an earlier flight the next day.

Got back to Delhirium on Thursday morning.

Lebanon, NEW HAMPSHIRE

... is where I am as I write this quickie post. I've spent two days with a friend in her "pink palace" -- a rambling house with wonderful light, one husband, two cats and a one-year-old-today baby.

There's so much I could write about but time constraints force me to keep this to the teeniest minimum. I arrived in the US on Friday night, spent that night in Boston with D&D, my niece and new nephew-in-law, traveled the next day to Newport and spent one happy night and day there, before returning to Boston on Sunday. Monday morning I had a very good session at Tufts University, talking to drama students of Prof Sean Edgecombe about my play HARVEST. Monday night I was once more with D&D, and we had an extremely jovial dinner at JOE'S, a high-quality burger restaurant. Tuesday morning I left for Lebanon, NH, intending to spend one night but then got SNOWED IN -- Vermont got two feet of snow -- so I delayed departure and am very grateful for the big friendly home I'm in.

And now I'm going to end this bulletin with a typically bizarre story, encountered on Yahoo News. Enjoy!
YOGI SURVIVES WITHOUT FOOD & WATER

Feel Good Moment of a Lifetime?

Wow. That's all I can say to this astounding SURVIVAL STORY. The take-home message is: NEVER give up ... but also, if you must drown, do it in a very cold climate.

The Eerie Beauty of Iceland's Volcanic Eruption

The Eerie Beauty of Iceland's Volcanic Eruption

The title of this piece is what it was given by TIME Mag. I would've said "dramatic" rather than "eerie". Dramatic, eerie, whatever -- I remember thinking it would've been fantastic to have had cameras trained on the vent say an hour or so before the actual eruption. It would have been the ultimate in fire and ice -- glacier and lava! Yum. Now, if we could only organize a mountain-sized chunk of sugar alongside, we might have cooked up a natural Baked Alaska fit for a giant.

Sunitha Krishnan fights sex slavery | Video on TED.com

Sunitha Krishnan fights sex slavery | Video on TED.com

Down The Dark Alley

This is perhaps a cruel contrast to my last post -- so if it's been a difficult day so far, you may want to click past this one right away -- but it's also got an astonishing and profoundly touching clarity. We all know terrible things happen: sometimes they happen to us, and of course to the millions of people we read about in the press. Here's the Pulitzer Prize winning feature article (2010) that appeared in the Washington Post. About how some of those to whom the worst of the worst has happened deal with the rest of their lives. FATAL DISTRACTION: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? by Gene Weingarten

A HAPPY Story

Last night a friend dropped by for an after-dinner visit saying he just HAD to do something for a little dog he'd seen lying by the side of the road near his parents' home in Panchsheel. "I heard this low moaning from the side of the road and when I stopped and got down there she was. Poor thing!" A car must have run her over, because at least one her back legs was badly damaged. "It may have happened a day or two ago, because (the leg) was full of maggots and stinking ..."

He lives in Bombay so he couldn't take the poor creature in himself. His neighbour suggested calling the animal ambulance in the morning. But when he got to our house he was still wincing at the thought of leaving the animal alone and suffering all through the night.

"What about FRIENDICOES-SECA?" one of us said.

"Wow! Great idea -- why didn't I think of them right away?" When our friend lived in Delhi, he'd had two wonderful and much loved strays living with him. He had gone to the famous animal shelter under the Defence Colony Flyover whenever he needed help with his dogs.

"Uh-oh, don't have their number though," we said.

"NO problem," said our friend. "I'll just call Just Dial and find out --"

Literally one minute later, there was the number -- well, a list of them, actually -- for Friendicoes, sent by SMS, to our friend's phone. Another couple of minutes later, and after a couple of dud numbers, he got through to Friendicoes and explained the situation. "Do you want me to be there to identify the dog?" he asked, already holding his car keys in hand.

Keep in mind this was maybe 10.15 at night. The friendly voice at the other end said, "No, that's all right. Our night ambulance driver'll go over and collect the dog. All you have to do is tell him where to go. I'll give you his number ..."

Our friend called the number and described exactly where the animal was. Maybe fifteen minutes later he got a call from the driver, saying that he'd found the dog, had taken her in and all was well. We could hear the dog's pathetic whining even without holding the phone to our own ears.

Our friend and one of us decided this was really great. So they drove over to the shelter right away. By that time, the little dog had been registered, her wound dressed and she'd been given a sedative to ease her pain. Our friend had said on the phone that he thought it may be best to put her to sleep, but at the shelter they just smiled and nodded (I wasn't there, so I'm just reporting what I was told).

Today, when I went online to check their site, I realized that they've probably had loads of "hopeless cases" whom they resurrect and find happy homes for! Maybe this little one will be another such story. We made a donation right away, of course. But more than anything else, we came away from the experience feeling an unfamiliar sense of total gladness.

Everything was good: the fact that our friend gave in to his compassionate nature, the fact that Just Dial worked at once, the Friendicoes response and at the end of it all, one little creature saved from a lonely, painful death. Friendicoes was totally uncommercial: making the donation was absolutely voluntary. They go and collect the animal when they get a call; the rest is up to the conscience of the caller.

Yes -- yes -- I KNOW: it was just one dog, just one story.

Right.

But in this sad old world even one story is a miracle.

SAME & DIFFERENT

Here we go! A link to SAME & DIFFERENT, at Tulika's web-site, now on sale. I am waiting impatiently for my author copies for immediate give away -- the one big thrill of publishing boox is being able to give 'em away!

Oh -- and here's a link to a page at Tulika's Blog where I describe how I did the drawings.

April Fool's Day TRICK

It's the first of April and time for some magic. I have NO idea how this was done, but I'm guessing major manipulation of space-time and perhaps a pact with the Devil thrown in on the side. This AMAZING TRICK by Chinese Magician LIU QIAN was sent to me by none other than ... AA. Of course.

Error Messages

Further to the theme of Failure that I've been pursuing, here is a series of ERROR MESSAGES*. Do I need to mention that they were sent to me by the Incomparable Anvar Alikhan? I don't know who designed them and executed the graphics but I would send them a bouquet of roses, if I could.
(*Okay, if you've never seen one before, it means you are not human. Thank you for visiting this blog. I am sincerely honoured)

The Uses of Failure!

[This is a re-run of a piece I wrote years ago for my column in the Pioneer. It was later reproduced in Rediff-on-the-Net and entirely forgotten by me until, through a series of coincidences, I REDIFFcovered it on the net. So if you missed it the first time around 10 years ago, no worries! Here it is again]


If you were given "a piece of wire that is bent to a rectangular, triangular, or otherwise shaped hoop, the end parts of which wire piece form members or tongues lying side by side in contrary directions" -- what would you do with it?

Use it to bind sheets of paper together, I hope, because that is a description of one of the early versions of paper clip, the invention of a Norwegian called Johan Vaaler. This fragment of information is just one of countless revelations made in a fascinating book called The Evolution of Useful Things by Henry Petroski (author of a book about another supremely useful thing, The Pencil).

It is humbling to realise how much thought, effort and, yes, even passion lies behind all manner of objects which we take for granted in the blurred momentum of our urban lives. By describing the conception of such items as zip fasteners, cutlery and "Scotch" tape, Petroski pays homage to the astounding inventiveness and optimism of our species.

Take, for example, sticky tape. I am one of those people who cannot survive for long without at least four different types of tape close at hand: Narrow and clear for basic bonding; broad and opaque for packing parcels; Scotch magic tape for sneaky repairs like torn currency notes: and the absolutely indispensable double-sided tape for any job which requires one sheet of paper to be attached as neatly as possible to another without the mess of wet glue.

According to this book, gummed tape evolved out of the 1925 fashion, in the US, for cars painted in two colours. A young salesman called Richard Drew, who worked for the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing company -- which, at that time, specialised in waterproof sandpaper, heard auto shop workers complaining about the difficulty they had painting these two-tone cars.

Producing clean edges between two shades of paint required some part of the car's surface to be protected while the second colour was being sprayed on. But the adhesive used to fix the protective mask onto the car was often so strong that it took one coat of paint off with it when the mask was removed.

Drew set himself the challenge of producing a type of paper which would adhere to a surface temporarily. It took him two years to chance upon crinkly paper as the ideal medium. The brand name Scotch, belonging to the company we all know now as 3M, is supposed to have arisen because the tape was initially adhesive only along its edges. Users reportedly complained that due to the "Scotch" stinginess of its manufacturers, the tape wasn't sticking properly! This resulted in the tape being gummed across its whole surface.

Similarly, in 1978, Art Fry, a chemical engineer also working for 3M, felt the need to mark the pages in his hymnal with bookmarks which wouldn't fall out. What he needed was an adhesive strong enough to keep a small scrap of paper from falling out of a book, yet weak enough not to damage the page it was on. A fellow employee and researcher called Stephen Silver had accidentally discovered just such an adhesive. Because the company they worked for took a benevolent view of extracurricular inventiveness, Fry was able, in a year-and-a-half of experimenting, to come up with the now ubiquitous little bits of paper called Post-its.

"Form follows function" has been a designer's mantra for many decades now. But, in his book, Petroski contends, "The form of one thing followed from the failure of another thing to function as we would like. Whether it is the bookmarks which fail to stay in place or taped-on notes that fail to leave a once-nice surface clean and intact, their failure... is what leads to the true evolution of artifacts."

What an attractive and hopeful thought this is! I read it to mean that failure is one of the building blocks of success: that failure can be, and often is, the foundation on which strong and vibrant ideas are built. Those of us who fail are generally given little encouragement except to be whipped to perform better the next time around. The celebration of success hides a fear and an abhorrence of failure; and yet, in a sense, failure in the form of death is the ultimate fate of every mortal being. How much gentler and more powerfully inclusive it is, therefore, to recognise that every failure is an invitation to improvise, improve and innovate.

In one example after the other, Petroski demonstrates his point: The safety-pin which evolved out of the failure of straight pins to protect their users from getting pricked; the incredible variety of hardware items, each invented and patentable only because they filled a need which some other item failed to satisfy; the endless variety of cans and their corresponding openers. There is such a thing as creative discomfort, Petroski's book suggests, which is the ultimate fount of all creation.

Statistics

This appeared on the edit page of the Asian Age on Tuesday, 16th March (i.e., one day after International Women's Day), in an article written by the former governor of J&K and former Union Minister, Jagmohan:

"Domestic violence is also quite common. About 45 per cent of women are slapped. One case of cruelty by husband and relatives is reported every nine minutes. General crime against women, too, is widespread. There is one molestation case every 15 minutes, one rape every 29 minutes, one dowry death every 77 minutes, and one incident of sexual harassment every 53 minutes."

No wonder the sex ratio (quoted in this article) currently stands at 927 females for every 1000 males!

Someone's got it RIGHT ... maybe?

Just looking at the pictures, I feel the book must be great to own -- a beautifully stylized version of the RAMAYANA, by US-based cartoonist/artist Sanjay Patel. I just happened to notice a reference to the book (its full title: RAMAYANA: The Divine Loophole) at CNN GO Asia via TwitterBuddy Elu and instantly fell in love with the visuals. They remind me of the wonderful angular style and colour palette of American wildlife artist, (the late) CHARLEY HARPER -- but exciting and lively in their own unique way. I've never heard of the book, but am assuming that's just becoz I live with my head tucked under my arm.

Rethinking HAPPINESS

Here's a link to an article in the NEW YORKER -- it's worth reading, regardless of how happy/unhappy you are at the moment. A couple of years ago I read a book called HAPPINESS: Lessons from a New Science by Richard Layard which was interesting for several reasons but especially because (a) it suggested that the law of diminishing returns applies to happiness as it does with many other things and (b) this particular books ends with a discussion about chemical solutions to depression. I thought this second point was very odd but then again ... it's about happiness, right? And for many people a little chemical help is entirely crucial to maintaining the brightness of their smile -- please be sure to include white sugar in your definition of "chemical help"!

Anyway. The New Yorker article is an elaboration of the points raised in the book (i.e., if you read the article, you don't really need to read the book). On the one hand, I remember an Arab businessman friend whom we met more than 40 years ago, part of the oil-rich tide that spilled over into India, looking for new markets and business. He said that being rich certainly did not guarantee happiness but if you're going to be sad either way, then "... it's better to be rich and sad than poor and sad."

MEANWHILE! More videos. These two are from my recent trips to FATEHPUR SIKHRI and the TAJ MAHAL.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Well and here I am, back in Delhuxe.

Since posting the zebrae I have heard from Tulika books that they will NOT spank me for uploading bits of images from SAME & DIFFERENT, their next title by me. So ... here's another one. I may be unable to resist posting fragments from each of the pages in the days/weeks ahead! I normally lose interest in my work the moment it's delivered and out of my hands, but with picture books, I remain enthusiastic at least until I've seen the printed result.

Meanwhile, I must report I had a funny dream the other night -- all about ring-tailed lemurs!! Nothing much happened in my dream, except that there were a number of the cute little critturs leaping about, making their musical cries and blinking their enormous orange eyes. At the Goa Seminar (see the post just before this one ...) dreams and dream analysis were amongst the topics of discussion and we had a bonafide dream expert, MADHU TANDON, author of DREAMS & BEYOND (Penguin Books) to reveal a little bit about the unconscious mind and the tales it sometimes tells us.

Alas, I missed the dream analysis session at breakfast on the day I left Goa -- even though I no longer pay much attention to my own dreams. I used to, but over a period of time came to the conclusion that I am too prosaic and insensitive a person to have mystical experiences. I dream a great deal but nearly always in the ring-tailed lemur mode -- i.e., there's a great deal of detail and amusement, quite often with sound and light (and sometimes smell) effects, but rarely anything else. Whenever I've tried to write down dreams after waking up, the result is that I have more and more astonishing "adventures" and spend less and less time actually awake. Still. It would have been fun to have been at the session. I like talking about and hearing about the dream world, even though I find it difficult to believe that they (dreams) are anything more than a type of mental hobby for the brain, while it's recovering from its daytime activities.

AND ...

On a completely different note: while reading about gay rights and a recent ruling in the USA which makes it legal for gay couples to marry in yet another state (Maryland?) I got to wondering why people belonging to alternative-gender lifestyles don't frame a different contract altogether. I wrote to someone who is an activist in the gay rights movement, and asked if there were any moves in that direction and was told that there were, but not enough consensus to make the initiative stick.

It would be so cool, I think, if alt-sex groups cobbled together a type of contract that would actually appeal across the board to anyone who is sick of the inanities of the conventional marriage contract while at the same time recognizing the need for formal ties.


AND! A new feature, from a great site called ANIMOTO -- instant little animations! Using your own stuff. In this case, it's a collection of my drawings and 'toons.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

GOIN' GOAN

I'm currently in Bombay, enjoying the pleasant aftermath of three days in Goa at the very enjoyable seminar organized jointly by the Sahitya Akademi and Goa University on Fantasy, Science Fiction, and other Forms of the Marvellous in Indian Literature. These two photographs are all that I succeeded in capturing on account of having my camera with me but refusing to take out anywhere, with the result that I could only use my cellphone (All Hail Nokia E71!).

The seminar was only my second experience of an ac-lit seminar but based on these two experiences (the previous one being in Ch'garh ten days ago) I could easily become addicted! It was fun, it was interesting and I think we all came away feeling better and broader for it -- no puns intended. A partial* list participants is:
(* it's not exhaustive becoz this list is cut-and-pasted from the list of those staying at the Hotel NOVA GOA. I'm too lazy to look up the printed list to check to see who else was present at the seminar, if they weren't on this list)

1. Dr. A Krishna Murthy, Secretary Sahitya Akademi
2. Alok Bhalla, Jamia. Delhi, Advisor, Sahitya Akademi,
3. Gitanjali Chatterjee, Dy. Secretary, Sahitya Akademi
4. Arshia Sattar, Bangalore, Seminar Co-Ordinator,
5. Malashri Lal, Seminar Co-Ordinator, Delhi U,
6. Sahitya Akademi accounts/office staff
7. Ahana Lakshmi, translator, Chennai
8. Deepa Agarwal , writer, translator, Delhi
9. Kavita Sharma , writer, academic, Director, India International Centre
10. Madhu Tandan, writer, dream analyst, Delhi
11. Mahesh Sharma, historian, writer, Chandigarh
12. Manjula Padmanabhan, writer, artist Delhi
13. Namita Gokhale, writer, publisher, Delhi
14. Neerja Mattoo, writer, translator, Kashmir
15. Raju Natesh, writer, artist.
16. Reba Som, author, singer and translator, Director, ICCR Tagore Centre, Kolkata.
17. Sanjukta Dasgupta, writer, translator, academic, Calcutta Univ
18. Shilo Shiv Suleiman, Illustrator
19. Sukrita Paul Kumar, poet, academic, ILLL, Delhi Univ.
20. Sumanyu Satpathy, translator, academic, Head, Dept of English, Delhi Univ.
-- ah -- one person who I know was at the seminar, but wasn't on this list is
21. China Meiville, writer, UK, whom we borrowed from the British Council's Lit Sutra.

March Madness

Need a laugh? Go visit THIS SITE featuring howlers of the political rally kind.

But in other news ... I am still chasing my tail, trying desperately to get one lot of work completed in order to make space for the OTHER lot, which, coincidentally happens to be my primary work (i.e., writing, painting). Ahem. Well ... yep. I'm the sort of degenerate being who cannot even manage to play hooky in a competent fashion, because one way or another it's ALL WORK. *snarl*

I did manage to complete my picture-book-for-the-year, however and am feeling very pleased about it. It's called SAME & DIFFERENT and is another* book of picture puzzles. I am posting a TINY sample below -- and haven't asked my publisher TULIKA's permission yet, so if you return later today and discover that there's NO PICTURE it means I've been smacked on the head and sent to bed without supper. I delivered the artwork last week and the finished result should be out in print, I'm told, in maybe a week from now!! The speed at which books leap off the desk and into the world these days just takes my breath away. (*the first one was called I AM DIFFERENT, also from TULIKA)

Chandigarh Revisited!

On Friday I went off to Chandigarh for a quickie visit. I was a guest of the Ch'garh Sahitya Akademi with the lightest of light duties to perform: all I had to do was introduce three other writers at the afternoon STORY-TELLING SESSION. The writers were Prof Tej Nath Dhar, Prof Carolyn Kraus and Dr Jaideep Chadha and they each read from their work -- Prof Dhar read an extract from his book UNDER THE SHADOW OF MILITANCY, Prof Kraus read her short story GARGOYLE and Dr Chadha read his short story THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DOOMED.

The one day Lit-Fest was organized by Dr Manju Jaidka, Chair of the Akademi and a person with unlimited resources of energy. The LitFest marked the culmination of a three day "International Conference on Literature and Culture Post-1980" and there was a party atmosphere over at the Panjab* University campus, where the events were taking place. There's more information here. (*this is how it's spelt on their sign boards. I was surprised, the first time I saw it, but was assured that it wasn't a proofing error).

I had a very happy visit with my good friends JACQUIE and RANJIT SINGH and got back to Delhi after a bare two nights, on Sunday morning. As usual, I have no time to breathe or think, so I'll stop for the moment after uploading these two pix, taken at the Ch'garh Railway Station.

Madras,14-02-2010 My sister and niece pose for a picture just before the Event -- nope, NOT a wedding, though it looks like one! It was a family blessing, to celebrate the marriage which took place on the first of January this year. I'll post more pix to a SnapFish album later this week. It was a very pleasant occasion and much amusement was had by all.

Monuments-R-Us

FatehpurSikri


This is where I was yesterday, with my sister S, niece D and new nephew-in-law D -- in fact he's in the frame, in white, near the left. The photograph is a first for moi, something I took with my New!Improved! phone, a very superior creature given to me as a gift by my OTHER niece, M. I'm a little afraid of the phone and try not to use it in a rude or inappropriate manner and have so far not made the effort to scrape pictures out of its memory and into my computer's memory. And it doesn't like sending things by MMS (have I set up a profile? Noooo). But yesterday, on a whim, I tried sending myself an image via Gmail. Voila! This is the result.

When I say it's a first for me, I mean that this is the first image from my phone that I've managed to get out of it and into the wider world. Of course, it took a whole minute to upload to Gmail, so I am not likely to send more out anytime soon. *sigh* The worst thing about superior gadgets is the feeling that they're smirking quietly in their shiny little black skins, knowing that they're getting the better of their clunky human owners.

KNOW-IT-ALL

... which is a book by a youngish man who took approx one year to read all the way through the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It's called The Know-It-All: One Man's HUMBLE QUEST to become the SMARTEST PERSON in the World by A.J. Jacob. 33,000 pages, 65,000 articles, 9,500 contributors, 24,000 images, a total of some 44 million words.

I hadn't heard about it before seeing it on the "Humour" (haha -- of course I actually mean HUMOR, right? coz I was in the US. But I am not yet ready to give up my birth-orthography) shelf in a Barnes & Noble near my sister's home in Pennsylvania. Maybe in Vestal, NY -- I forget. I was trying NOT to buy anything because books are the heaviest item in my luggage and I am determined to morph into a light-luggage traveller in my twilight years (I believe in announcing the twilight as early as possible so that I've got used to the idea well before I really need to). So one of my methods of NOT buying a book, is to find at least one small something to buy -- which may turn out to be a book -- so that I don't leave the store empty-handed and ALSO so that I don't fall for some gigantic Leviathan of a coffee-table tome just because the Book-Buying-Slot in my psyche has been left empty. If you know what I mean? I fill the pre-existing empty book-buying-space in my head quickly and with a small, light book, in order to lower the chances of finding something much heavier and more expensive to squeeze in there.

Okay. So having seen it, I also saw a CD-ROM offering to improve my memory. Hmmm! TOUGH CHOICE!! So I went with the memory CD (more of this later). But all the way home from B&N and for the rest of the week, I kept feeling I NEEDED to read that Know-It-All book. You see, like many millions of other bipedal mammals around the world, I too have hungered after that very quest, to read all the way through the Enc.Brit. My sisters and I, three of us, each have our personal set of the books. I got mine in the late '90s because a very dear friend had left me Rs 25,000 as a bequest when she died of cancer -- it was a completely unexpected windfall and rather than use it up on groceries and rent I wanted to staple the money down in some way that I would always cherish. I knew that she would have wholly approved because she had one of the brightest, liveliest minds amongst the friends I've had over the years, and believed passionately in the notion of knowledge as an end in itself.

On my way back through New York, I had a few hours to spare before meeting up with my friend Kristen at her apartment in Manhattan. I knew exactly where I would find a B&N. So I took in a movie, visited another store at which I bought gifts for my niece and her new husband, then went into the B&N on 18th St and 5th (World's Largest Book Store -- and apparently the original B&N), sailed up to the information counter and explained that I wanted a book whose name and author I didn't know (I hadn't begun my Memory Expansion course yet!) -- but I DID know what it was about. To his credit, he didn't blink or even look mildly surprised, but listened courteously as I said "... by someone who read all the way through the Britannica ..." and bing! -- "Yes," he said, "I know that book -- upstairs, in the Humour section -- " Then he looked it up on his computer and I had the name and title.

The front cover sports a recommendation from Jon Stewart: "... is a hilarious book and quite an impressive achievement. I've always said, why doesn't someone put out a less complete version of the encylopedia? Well done, A.J." And you know what? For once I can say I agree with that recommendation. It's a pleasant, friendly and cruising-speed sort of read and at the end of it, you know a thing or two that you maybe didn't at the beginning. Naturally, it helps that I love having my own edition of the Enc.Brit., that I enjoy using it and that I have believed for a long time that it is a brilliant way keep knowledge captive in the house in a form that will continue to work even when the power fails and the internet is down and the laptop's batteries are dead. But the EB eulogy-dimension aside, it's also just a warm and human story.

Alongside the gentle reeling out of facts, the author throws out a couple of hooks to keep us reading. One is his and his wife's quest to conceive a child and the other is his desire to show that there are SOME practical applications to being an EB reader: i.e., appearing on game shows. Well, not just any game show but Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? And also Jeopardy -- but he disqualifies himself from Jep because he had interviewed the show's host prior to applying to appear on the show, not realizing that would be enough to invalidate his eligibility.

As it happens, I'm a WWTBAM fan. I've never watched it on TV, but it's one of the things I do on long-haul flights -- I play obsessively on the in-flight entertainment system. So far, after eight or nine such flights I have only ONCE made it to the top prize (it's the British edition of the quiz so many of the questions are UK based). I never know any of the wretched sports and local trivia questions and anyway, who am I kidding? My general knowledge is so abysmal that the other day, I sent a package to a friend in Coimbatore, and was shocked that it took 10 days to reach him. The reason? I believed C'tore was in KERALA, not TAMIL NADU!!! Aaaargh. So ... yes, it took its time getting there. And yes, I have a great deal of Swiss Cheese in my mental larder.

But I like to play nevertheless. So for me, this book had that bated-breath quality that I know so well from my in-flight activities -- and no, of COURSE I'm not going to tell you what happens! They do succeed in having a child, BTW. That's on the back cover so I'm not giving away any suspense here and besides, in my world, well ... reproduction is just not a red-button issue, right?

Along the way the author enrolls with MENSA and tells us that he gets in because of his SAT scores, but when he sits for the regular test anyway, he flunks (doesn't lose his membership however). This too resonates with me: in the very distant past -- like when I was twelve -- my school discovered that I had a high IQ and made a minor fuss over me (it was forbidden to reveal scores in those days so I have no idea). But that was 44 years ago and now my IQ is below tree-shrew-level. So I could enjoy this about the book too: recognizing in someone else that weirdly embarrassing desire for validation. The endearing thing about this account is that it could so easily have been radioactive with ego but instead is only mildly self-congratulatory. I don't know whether he was trying especially hard or not, but I found his account modest in a believable, non-phony way.

I enjoyed the tid-bits of data he shared -- Neat's Foot Oil is made from the hooves of cattle; Descartes had an obsession with cross-eyed women, and yes, the Fibonacci series continues to be a very cool thing to think about. I also noted tiny anomalies -- the god Kama is an "angel"?? No way. I should look it up in my edition of the EB to see whether it's in the book or in Jacob's interpretation of what the book says. Most of all, I enjoyed the slow coasting through that sea of information, felt glad to known now that it was worth doing and also relieved to feel no special urge to do it, now that I had sampled its pleasures through this book.

And now to turn to the Memory Expansion CD ... you know what? It was (a) a gyp because it's much too breezy and truncated to be of any real worth and (b) I've taken way too long over this book-report and (c) I'm still working my way through the exercises. I'll get back with a complete report once I can tell you whether or not I can remember my telephone number and the locations of Indian cities.

Paul Theroux's A DEAD HAND

An aside: I am back in Delhirium. Arrived Sunday night, after a pleasant 10-day trip. Jet Airways gets a major thumbs up from me -- the service is friendly, courteous and efficient. I must confess -- and it pains me much to say this -- slender, young and attractive cabin crew really do appear to make a difference to the overall ease-of-experience. It pains me coz I would like to think that a person's appearance makes no difference to how they perform; but based on several years' worth of flying experience, it is hard not to conclude that men and women who look neat, tight and fresh-minted actually work more efficiently. I don't know which comes first -- the efficiency or the appearance? -- but the combination really does seem to make a difference to the quality of a passenger's experience. Maybe this is just years of advertising finally taking its toll on my objectivity? But since many airlines have consigned the pencil-thin virginal seductress standard to the dustbin of history, it is now a rare pleasure to look up and think "How ... sweet!"

OKAY. And so to A DEAD HAND. I am at a slight disadvantage because I no longer have my copy with me. So if I make mistakes, sorry. (WARNING: I'm not especially trying to make this spoiler-free, so if you haven't read the book, you may want to do that first. Or not. I don't mind having the suspense removed from a book before I read it -- sort of like handling a venomous snake without its fangs makes it possible to enjoy the snake)(but then again, some would say, why bother?)(you'll have to decide for yourself what you'd prefer)

My basic take on the book is that it's clever, highly manipulative and cynical AND ALSO disarmingly humble and reflective -- I sense for the first time (with Theroux), the author telling us, "Look, I'm aging, I'm starting to see the end of my road, I've seen practically every place in the world that's worth seeing, I've done my time in many variations on the Third, the Fifth, the Tenth World and now I'm tired of playing games with truth: I returned to India recently and this is what I saw, this is what I felt, this is what I think and if you don't like me for it, if you believe I'm a shallow, scheming white supremacist in Friendly Tourist clothing -- well, I don't give a f**k."

The story kept my interest even though I found the female lead, the American woman called Merrill Unger, unconvincing from page one. But this is one of the astonishing features of Theroux's fiction -- he can use utterly plastic, make-believe elements alongside observations that are so tight-focused, so precisely, even cruelly, observed, that it doesn't matter in the end. Or -- well: that's what I felt having read only two pieces of fiction, ELEPHANTA SUITE and now this novel. Both books have been set in India, so perhaps in both cases it is easier for me to separate the plastic from the pukka. I didn't care that the woman was such a throwback to a Rider Haggard Femme Fatale or that the protagonist was such an extreme sap. It didn't bother me that the two secondary characters, Parvati and Raj (? one of those generic Indian male names starting with "R") are such cardboard cut-outs. I can't even explain why none of this matters -- I know it should -- but maybe it's because I see his story-telling as only a clothes-horse he uses as a support for the observations he has collected along the way.

So none of the plot elements really matter: the cheesy American woman with her magic hands and her blood-stained sari-hem, the unconvincing son, the post-colonial Doctor at the Police Station and the murder itself, the pathetic little victim and the limp-wristed ploy used to bring the author into the picture. Really, looked at from the distance of two weeks, the story is pure hokum. Indian Jones' Temple of Doom was more credible.

But we all know that there really ARE manual labourers all over the country, seething, sweating vast hordes of them, whose lives are considered to be of very little vlaue. There really are animal sacrifices at Kali temples. There really are hundreds of child prostitutes, child labourers, child destitutes. If I've never heard before that extreme manual labour can result in the fingerprints being worn away, or that the sacrifices are quite as nauseatingly bloody as in this book or that little girls are sold in an open field lit only by the light from smoking braziers well, that's just my ignorance. My unawareness of something doesn't mean that it can't be true.

I could go on like this, but actually I'm less interested in revealing the plot or evaluating the book -- as far as I'm concerned, it was a rewarding read and I would recommend it strongly -- than in something that gnawed at me all the way through, something that had nothing to do with Theroux or the book. It is this: why is it so unlikely that an Indian author would write such a book?

This isn't meant to be a real question because I don't think anyone is detached enough to answer it honestly; it's something to chew over and to find several half-answers to. For instance, it's very likely that an Indian author inclined in this direction would simply not find a publisher. After all, the story is mundane and many of its characters are tissue-thin. Theroux gets away with it because he has the luxury of being a highly successful author whose publishers will indulge him and whose readers will buy his books even if they don't think they're going to like each particular one. He has proven many times over that his ability to observe people and cultures is ironic and eccentric but also bitterly true. Some part of his attraction is that he bites, he stings, he cuts to the bone. But he seems to be equally unsparing with himself.

Then again, I have to ask myself whether my lurking and hard-to-suppress fellow-citizen-bias would make it hard -- impossible? -- for me to accept some of the weaker bits of this novel if they appeared in a book by an Indian? There's an echo here of a complaint voiced in the context of the Jaipur lit-fest, of the term "bhasha language poetry"; is this truly something to feel irritated by or is it just a label that we wouldn't even notice the inappropriateness of, if it took place in the context of someone else's culture? I can't decide.

Which leads me to wonder out loud whether we (i.e. Indians) EVER really allow one another to make scathing observations about the Motherland/our families/our religions without either (a) balancing the criticism with such a thick coating of sugar that the critique becomes irrelevant or (b) ostracizing/belittling/ignoring the offending writer until he/she is forced to give up writing altogether?

These are all questions that I don't have answers for, but I thought were worth raising.

Resolutions UPDATE; Travel; AVATAR (the movie)

RESOLUTIONS

Well, here we are sailing past the first fortnight of the year and it seemed a good time to review how my resolutions are doing: not bad, but not great. The main thing is that I HAVE stopped playing Mahjongg Solitaire*. I am almost up-to-date with my diary and I've certainly been plugging away at my book projects. But I'm still traveling in short gasps, and several of them and I've been avoiding the careful-bill-stashing altogether. (*About the Solitaire, I must admit it wasn't a smooth transition: I spent the whole of the year's first week playing games at the LUMOSITY site instead! My justification was, of course, that my brain's power was being significantly boosted, as evidenced by the sharp angle at which all the scores were rising. But at the end of the week my free membership came to an end. I had to choose whether or not to crawl my way out of the swamp of moronism all the way up to Einsteinhood for the mere pittance of $5 a month. And I decided to take my chances with moronism. Since then, NO GAMES)
TRAVEL

Thursday night, I pulled up stakes and flew to NYC on Jet Airways. It was a close call, getting to the airport on time because the Season Finale of Boston Legal was being aired and I was determined not to miss it. So instead of leaving the house at ll.30, we left at 12.00, which was the time I should have already been at the airport, checking in. I kept calling the Jet Airways Fog Delay number, hoping against hope that the flight WOULD be delayed -- in which case I could watch the season finale in peace -- but oh no, of course THAT never happens, right? Just like the watched pot that never boils, a flight is never delayed if you WANT it to be delayed. Anyway, I watched finale and arrived half an hour late at the airport and it didn't matter much at all. We boarded at the correct time only to wait an hour on the runway. Still, we DID take off (rather than be delayed for nine hours which is what routinely happens during Fog Season) and that was a relief. I had a great seat -- an aisle seat in the front of my section, excellent leg room. I give Jet Airways service high marks -- next only to Virgin Atlantic, in my experience. On Continental the hostesses behave like wardens in an asylum for retarded war criminals ("... please remain seated until we allow you to move around and oh by the way there will only be two meals served on board for the full duration of your 16-hour nonstop to Newark and if you can't shut up and watch your movies quietly, we'll sedate you and flush you down the toilet.")and on Air India, the flight crew all behave like contented tabby-cats, waddling about in their saris and dispensing greasy meals with a homespun cheeriness inappropriate to hurtling through the upper atmosphere at 500 KPH.

However in Brussels, where there was a halt and change of aircraft, our flight arrived one hour late and that, combined with the one and a half hour hold up on account of enhanced security for all flights to the US meant that I caught my onward flight with seconds to spare. AAAAARGH. I absolutely detest having to run for anything, but the prospect of missing the flight (to be stuck in Europe without a Schengen visa would certainly have qualified as junior membership in Hell) had me sprinting the last five hundred yards. It didn't help that the man behind me in the queue insisted on repeating over and over, in Hindi, "These people are all COWARDS -- cowards, cowards, cowards --" ("yeh sab darpoke hain, darpoke, darpoke") meaning, Americans in particular and all westerners in general, were foolish to be afraid of a few innocent travelers arriving from the Third World. I can't be sure that I was the last passenger to board my flight, but it seemed to me they sealed the hatch minutes after I got to my seat. PHEW. Major panic stations there.

Other than that, it's been a great trip so far. Was collected at JFK by friends, had a very pleasant evening with them and the next morning was really grateful that they dropped me all the way to the Port Authority Bus Station from Long Island -- it's a 20 minute journey by car, but about an hour and a half by commuter train and subway. Caught the 10 a.m. bus to Binghamton and my sister collected me from there, at one o'clock. And then we sailed off to see AVATAR in glowing 3D ... but before I move on to my next topic, i.e., the movie, I must mention the outstanding dinner we had at home, Sunday night : lobster-stuffed steaks with baked potato. Unbelievably tender and delicious meat, outstanding dressing on the potatoes, everything cooked to perfection. My sister is a genius cook aside from all her other accomplishments, and that's final.

AVATAR
What can I say? I enjoyed the movie, in spite of myself. I was convinced I would find it unbearably soft-centred and sentimental -- and even though I wouldn't howl to the moon about it or anything, I have to admit it had moments of stunning beauty; and the mushy bits were not so deadly saccharine as to drown out the good bits (I didn't like the TITANIC, for instance, because of the utterly improbable-for-that-era romance). I knew I would not be especially wowed by the scenic sights coz I've already been wowed by MYST and I was certain this would be a MYST-like environment. And it was -- but the N'avi were beautifully realized, perhaps the smoothest transition from live-action to CGI that the world has seen so far (well, in mass-distribution media, anyway). So that was fun to watch. The romance was irritating, of course, but inevitable and thank goodness, not over-emphasized. And there was always Sigourney Weaver to link back to, every time we returned to the human dimension. The story was never going to be of much consequence, so heavily larded with guilt as it was bound to be, but within its constraints (i.e., the constraints of History and Reality) it did manage a generous portion of dignity.


However, there's another piece of fiction that has been tweaking my brain -- more engaging by far than AVATAR -- and that is Paul Theroux's A DEAD HAND. It was what I read on the flight out of Delhi, with the result that my arrival in NYC was distinctly Theroux-flavoured. I really enjoyed it and plan to devote my next bulletin here to it -- aside from being too sleepy to continue this blog-item right now, I want to dedicate a whole post to the book, rather than a mere section.

FIVE BOOKS

It was kind of fun responding to MAIL TODAY's "WHAT BOOK" question: Which five books have most influenced me? I was given 50 words of explanation per book. My response is HERE. Of course, five is just an arbitrary number! I would have preferred something like ten. Like I said, though, it was fun: this is not the same question as "Favourite Book" -- it's about which one's left a long footprint. I was surprised to remember Have Spacesuit Will Travel ...


IN CASE the whole article doesn't load at the site, here's the full text of what I sent them:

THE TITLES:
Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass – Lewis Carroll
Have Spacesuit Will Travel – Robert A. Heinlein
The Gormenghast Trilogy – Mervyn Peake
Gödel, Escher, Bach – Douglas R. Hofstadter
MYST – Robyn & Rand Miller

Each book marked a turning point in my understanding of reality; each one showed me different rules for managing the most weightless and outlandish of situations.

In Alice, which I read when I was six, the flowers talk and a caterpillar smokes a hookah. But Alice remains both rational and scrupulously polite. In Spacesuit, the ordinary becomes surreal: liquid spilled in zero-gravity turns into floating globules and the simple act of drinking coffee from a cup becomes an unlikely miracle. I read it when I was 12 and it undoubtedly shaped my life-long fascination with science as well as science-fiction.

I read Gormenghast in my early twenties. Physical reality in the book is conventional but the social dimension is utterly warped: we enter a castle as it celebrates the birth of its 700th Earl. The author was a brilliant illustrator, playwright and poet with an impish sense of humour. His trilogy is a wonderful reflection of all his talents.

In GEB, Hofstadter paints a picture of human intelligence using music, mathematics and art. His book is highly sophisticated, while never losing sight of his essential thesis: that at the heart of intelligence is a rogue thread of paradox and wit. As for MYST: yes, it's "just a game". But it became a type of electronic hallucination that I entered in late 1996 and never quite exited. I am forever clicking on white rabbits, looking through glass and finding cookies labelled "Eat Me": forever hopeful, curious and ready for a snack.

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Ms Malcontent Sez ... 2010 #02

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[I got tired of waiting to upload the panels one day at a time! Here it is, whole and in the correct sequence]


AND ALSO: Here's a review of DELHI NOIR in The Hindu Literary Review, Sunday 3rd Jan, 2010.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

RESOLUTIONS:

* At the top of my list: Stop playing MAHJONGG SOLITAIRE. I probably spend an hour of every day with this wretched thing. It's true that it "clears the decks" effectively -- but it's too time-heavy. I'll just have to find another way to clear my mental decks.

* In terms of work, I've got two picture books and one novel on my desk. I wish I was the sort of writer who could post daily progress reports. But that would freak me out so much I'm not going to even begin thinking about it. My typical work day begins at 9.30, when I wake up and 3.30 a.m. when I crawl into bed (it's 2 a.m. right now). In between, there's an endless struggle between dabbing at the key-board -- a few paragraphs -- and everything else: meals, cups of tea or hot-water-and-apple-juice (this is my current tipple of choice), chats on the phone with my sister/my mother/friends, solitaire, naps, TV. It's disgusting. I listen to other people say they work for 18 hours at a stretch and already I feel tired. I've also got paintings on the agenda and maybe a show. Or two.

* Fewer trips, longer stays. This resolution is going to be very difficult to keep. Especially as I'm starting the year with a shorty-short expedition -- just one week long. But I need to stop that.

* Stash my bills in an orderly way; currently there's one big padded envelope into which every bill gets stuffed and since I can never face opening the envelope the pile just grows bigger and more unmanageable until one weekend I spend the entire 48 hours struggling to make sense of the whole thing. If I would only stash them neatly to BEGIN with, there would never be that wasted 48 hours -- which I could otherwise spend napping or drinking hot water. *sigh*

* Post Ms Malcontent regularly. Like maybe every Sunday? That would be SO cool. I see that as a direct result of not playing solitaire any more. Maybe I'll get HER to play! Ha. That'll be fun.

* Keep a diary once more. For most of 2009, I failed to do this little thing that I've pretty much done most years, particularly since the late nineties. Everything depends on having the Right Diary in which to keep the record. It's especially important to get the Right Diary BEFORE the year begins. Which is currently the case: I have TWO diaries, actually, both very attractive. One is the WelcomGroup diary with contemporary art and the other is a spiral bound diary containing the wonderful drawings of the American artist CHARLEY HARPER. His Golden Book of Biology was something that grabbed my attention when I was 8 years old and never let go: I think my interest in both biology AND illustration was hugely augmented by his work! He died a couple of years ago, but his work has suddenly become highly accessible. My sister Su keeps me well supplied. Recently she gave me the Charley Harper MEMORY GAME set (you know, the game in which pairs of cards are placed face down and you take turns to expose them in pairs? Also called CONCENTRATION or PELMANISM) and I played endless rounds of the game with my niecelet in Madras. Outstanding.


LINK:
This isn't a resolution but a link to TULIKA's blog, where I wrote a short piece for them, about putting together the I AM DIFFERENT book.

HAPPY MERRY

NEWS PHOTOGRAPHS 2009

NEWS PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE BOSTON GLOBE

Go look at them, but keep your hands folded firmly over your heart or else it is liable to be wrenched right out.

I have two questions for visitors here: (a) tell me if you agree with me when I say that the handful of images which have been hidden and are accompanied by a too-disturbing warning (followed by "click here to view") are no less disturbing than the vast majority of the rest. Collectively, they present our species with excellent reasons to SEEK OUT extinction (b) What is your estimate of the percentage of people who DO click to view the hidden ones? Mine is 100% -- i.e. I think 100% percent of those who make the effort to see the pix, see 'em all.

Oh! And a final question: which of these searing images strikes you as being beyond-all-belief shocking? My choice, made with no deliberation (I mean, I haven't gone back and looked through the whole lot multiple times) is number 28.

I AM DIFFERENT! Review in Saffron Tree

This review of I AM DIFFERENT! appeared at the SAFFRON TREE site. I am very pleased that someone's noticed the book. TULIKA editors reported seeing potential buyers put the book down after one glance because "Oh! It's not in English!" It certainly seemed as if our decision to use 16 different Indian scripts -- with pronounciation guide -- had been a mistake, even though it's very clear that the scripts are additional value, not the only text.

Anyway, according to the comments at Saffron Tree there are at least a few readers who not only got the point and but also enjoyed muddling along with the unfamiliar words and shapes of other languages, while working through the (very simple) puzzles.

Remembering Bhopal

Please visit REMEMBER BHOPAL to leave your thoughts, your comments, your reminiscences of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. The 25th anniversary of the world's worst industrial disaster starts on the night of the 3rd and continues for 72 hours.

THE GRAPHIC CONNECTION

This article appeared in the Times of India's CREST edition, Saturday 14th (i.e., on Children's Day): More Power To Pictures. I thought I'd post it here for two reasons -- one, it increases the life of an article by, ummmm, a few minutes and two, because I'm going to be in conversation with one of the artists mentioned in the piece, David B., author of EPILEPTIC.

The event is scheduled for December 11th, at the IHC, New Delhi, courtesy the French Information Centre as part of their BONJOUR INDIA FESTIVAL. Clicking the link will take you to the BIF site. My event includes two other well-known graphic novelists, Sarnath Banerjee (CORRIDOR) and Nicolas Wild (KABOUL DISCO).

ANIMUSIC

Many of you may have already received e-mail forwards with either this video or variations on the theme. Well of course the "amazing instrument" is NOT real, but in case you want to visit the site to get information about the DVD and the developers of the video -- and see other videos -- here's the link to ANIMUSIC.

How To Put On A Bra -- Commando Style

Need I mention that I got this from the Incomparable AA?

WHERE DO UNDELETED CHARACTERS GO?

Got this from the Excellent Anvar Alikhan, who either spends far too much time sorting through the vast piles of garbage out there on the Net in order to send his friends only the choicest and most succulent of tidbits OR he never sleeps. Either way, I worry for him ... but am also very grateful.

According to my research this list is originally sourced to: Joel Garreau (garreau@well.com), as reported in his Cybersurfing column in the Washington Post


Where Do Deleted Characters Go?


QUESTION: Where do the characters go when I use my backspace or delete them on my computer?

ANSWER: The characters go to different places, depending on whom you ask:

The Catholic Church's approach to characters: The nice characters go to Heaven, where they are bathed in the light of happiness. The naughty characters are punished for their sins. Naughty characters are those involved in the creation of naughty words, such as "breast," "sex" and "contraception."

The Buddhist explanation: If a character has lived rightly, and its karma is good, then after it has been deleted it will be reincarnated as a different, higher character. Those funny characters above the numbers on your keyboard will become numbers, numbers will become letters, and lower-case letters will become upper-case.

The 20th-century bitter cynical nihilist explanation: Who cares? It doesn't really matter if they're on the page, deleted, undeleted, underlined, etc. It's all the same.

The Mac user's explanation: All the characters written on a PC and then deleted go to straight to PC hell. If you're using a PC, you can probably see the deleted characters, because you're in PC hell also.

Stephen King's explanation: Every time you hit the (Del) key you unleash a tiny monster inside the cursor, who tears the poor unsuspecting characters to shreds, drinks their blood, then eats them, bones and all. Hah, hah, hah!

Dave Barry's explanation: The deleted characters are shipped to Battle Creek, Michigan, where they're made into Pop-Tart filling; this explains why Pop-Tarts are so flammable, while cheap imitations are not flammable. I'm not making this up.

IBM's explanation: The characters are not real. They exist only on the screen when they are needed, as concepts, so to delete them is merely to de-conceptualize them. Get a life.

PETA's (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) explanation: You've been DELETING them??? Can't you hear them SCREAMING??? Why don't you go CLUB some BABY SEALS while wearing a MINK, you pig!!!!