Category Archives: Articles

A selection of my articles on a wide variety of topics, written over the past two decades for leading publications such as Gulf News (UAE) and The Hindu (India)

April 21, 2010 · 8:19 pm

Book launch: Ravi Subramanian’s ‘Devil in Pinstripes’

You don’t often see these many corporate-types at a typical book launch. Pretty much just one guy in the packed audience is wearing a t-shirt, and that one reads ‘Proud to be an IIMB alumnus’. And all around, you hear scattered gossip about how so-and-so, a common colleague, has been featured in the book…

That was the scene at Landmark during the launch of Devil in Pinstripes, Ravi Subramanian’s second novel set in the cutthroat world of banking in India, following his popular debut novel If God was a banker (2007) (his second book,I bought the Monk’s Ferrari (2007) was more of a how-to guide to corporate success, the “antithesis of Robin Sharma’s book”).

Turns out the crowd consisted mostly of ex-colleagues (from his Chennai days of working for Grindlays Bank) and ex-IIMB batchmates (Subramanian graduated in 1993). Mostly, but not entirely — a fair share was curious readers, people who’d enjoyed his earlier books, people who were intrigued by his insider’s view of the high-stakes world of international banking.

And, they all had the same question. “I have 17-18 years of my banking career left, I wouldn’t risk it by writing an autobiographical book,” he laughs. He admits he has written about things that have happened, but not of specific people: “I’ve taken extreme care that no character is recognisable; that would not be right.”

Devil in Pinstripes (launched by D. Murali, deputy editor, The Business Line, and Sundarrajan, managing director, Shriram Capital) centres around a fictional international bank in India, New York International Bank (just like in If God…), and outlines the politics, the power plays, and the Machiavellian manipulations that go on behind the scenes.

“This book was a lot harder to write — If God… had a clear-cut good guy and bad guy. It was all black and white,” says the Tiruchi-born, Ludhiana-brought up author who currently works at HSBC, Mumbai. “But in Devil…, every single character has shades of grey.”

Both books fall unapologetically into the Chetan Bhagat bracket of the New Indian masala novel — fast-paced easy reads, set in contemporary, urban India, with some frankly clunky writing and editing — that nevertheless appear to strike a chord with their readers. That connect was apparent as audience at the launch engaged the author in discussions on corporate fraud, ethics and intra-personal politics during the question-and-answer session.

“I was quite surprised by the audience reaction — by the way, I was interrogated!” he says laughing. Not surprisingly, his next book The Imperfect God will also be on banking. “Banks are one of the largest employers in the country, and have the largest number of job aspirants; they impact everyone’s lives; there’s money, sleaze and power struggle — and no one else is writing on them!”

This one, he says, will be set in the streets of Chennai, Coimbatore and Tanjavur. And, will also, no doubt, feature the basest form of corporate politics. But as Subramanian says: “Corporate politics is a way of life — learn to deal with it.”

***

Other recent book launches (fiction) in the city:

Aatish Taseer’s The Temple Goers

Shreekumar Varma’s Maria’s Room

Daisy Hasan’s The To-Let House

Not a work of fiction, but an excellent collection of poetry by an unlikely poet: G. Kameshwar’s Seahorse in the Sky

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April 21, 2010 · 7:55 pm

Interview with… M.S. Ananth

Director of IIT-M, M.S. Ananth tells DIVYA KUMAR about his love for academia, the setting up of the Research Park and his future plans for the university

PHOTO: S.R. Raghunathan


The view from M.S. Ananth’s fifth floor office window has to be one of the most beautiful in the city — a sprawling expanse of lush green treetops for as far as you can see below a clear blue sky. It’s enough to make you gasp when you first see it, but Ananth’s reaction is slightly different.

“We found out that a lot of these trees are invasive — there is 70 acres of Prosopisalone,” says the director of IIT-Madras ruefully, looking at the 630-acre campus. “Did you know that South Africa has launched a multi-million dollar project just to get rid of Prosopistrees?”

Of course, IIT-M can’t afford anything of that sort, so they’re working out alternative strategies — like selecting the spots with these rogue trees for future development. That’s just one of the many responsibilities, big and small, this unassuming man has shouldered with grace and a certain philosophical pragmatism during his tenure as director (since 2001).

“You know, I haven’t had too many major surprises in this job,” he says in his no-fuss way. “Conflicts arise, but it’s important to recognise that you’re no more ‘righteous’ than the other party in an argument. I try my best to have my way. But if I don’t, I know that in some larger perspective what happened is for the best. That acceptance is important.”

If all that sounds very philosophical and Zen, it is — Ananth is deeply influenced by the famous lines from the Bhagavad Gita: Karmanye Vaadhika-raste, Maa Phaleshu Kadachana…, perhaps a reflection of the time he spent attending discourses as a child. “It may sound facetious, but I’ve believed in it for a long, long time,” he says.

Academia is another thing this Ph.D. in chemical engineering has believed in for a long time. “I think I made up my mind in the sixth standard,” he laughs. “My maternal grandfather was a professor of English; other men I met were in the civil services, and he was the only one who never seemed to have a boss — so that was my major criterion!”

And he never saw a reason to change his mind while growing up, though if he’d had his way, he tells me, he’d be a doctorate in something else. “My interest initially was in history, of all things,” he recalls with a smile. “My father chose chemical engineering for me.”

He has no regrets — his love for history today finds expression in his interest in scientific history, particularly in the biographies of great scientists. Besides, he’s a firm believer that your discipline of study shouldn’t confine you. That is the basis of his grand ambition for the university — a radical, experimental restructuring of science and engineering departments — that unfortunately hasn’t happened yet.

“This ambition has been unfulfilled for nine years because I can’t get a consensus,” he says.

But another grand plan has finally come to fruition after nine years of pushing by Ananth and other professors — the Research Park that has recently become functional at IIT-M (30 companies have already signed up), the first of its kind in India. “The whole idea is the generation of a large number of ideas by the meeting of unlike minds — of industrialists, professors, and students,” he says. “All that’s required is one idea that clicks. That’s the basis of innovation.”

He experienced this ‘meeting of unlike minds’ as a Ph.D. student at the University of Florida, with innovation occurring due to the meeting of people from different cultures. “I had a lovely time —the American graduate school is an enviable place,” he says. “I’m fighting to try and recreate that atmosphere here — to have 25 per cent post-graduate students and 10 to 15 per cent of faculty from abroad.”

But as much as he loved college life in the U.S., Ananth knew that he wanted to return to India from very early on. “The first time I came back for a vacation, the moment I set foot here again, I knew,” he says simply. “The sense of belonging was here, not there. I’ve gone subsequently to the U.S. as a visiting professor — first to Princeton, then to Boulder, Colorado — and that feeling hasn’t changed.”

His passion for academia has obviously been passed on to both his children — his son is a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, his daughter in theoretical chemistry. His son has even followed in his footsteps and returned from the U.S. to teach at IISER in Pune. And the entire family, especially his late wife Jayashree, has always shared his love for the campus they have lived on since 1972, when he first joined as an assistant professor.

“Jayashree was very involved with the campus — she came up with pocket guides on the animals and birds here, she worked to keep the campus clean, with the Tech Kids crèche and the Atma charity wing,” he recalls fondly.

“As far as we were concerned, living on this campus was always a great boon.”

* * *

Striking a balance

* M.S. Ananth’s vision statement for IIT-Madras reads thus: “The institute should be in dynamic equilibrium with its social, ecological, and economic environment.”

* A biodiversity report of IIT-M’s campus was commissioned, invasive plants identified and poisonous plants removed. Fences were moved closer to buildings to make more space for the deer.

* A new hostel building was delayed by six months because an alternative route was created for black buck in the area.

* At urologist Dr. Ravichandran’s request, IIT-M professor S. Sankararaman created a phosphate binding agent for dialysis patients at one-tenth the original cost. (Other such projects have been undertaken since.)

* As part of IIT-M’s involvement in the ‘ Rural Technology Action Group’ (RuTAG), the Chemical Engineering Department developed a way to solidify vegetable dyes to reduce transport costs for artisans in Gandhigram.

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April 11, 2010 · 11:25 am

Interview with… Shreekumar Varma (Uncut version)

Photo: S.S. Kumar

Things can get a bit chess-game like in this writer’s study. Novel A gets cut by Novel B which in turn might get overtaken at any time by Play C or even Children’s Book D…

Welcome to the world of Shreekumar Varma, Writer-Multitasker extraordinaire. His website lists four items under ‘Work in Progress’ (“I actually deleted two others yesterday”) and his output in the last decade includes two published novels, two plays staged by the Madras Players, three children’s books, and contributions to a whole bunch of short story anthologies. And that doesn’t count the columns and articles he’s done for pretty much all the local newspapers or his forays into poetry.

Or, of course, the projects that have fallen behind in the chess game of completion and publication.

“It’s all very exciting,” he says, adding drolly, “But really, what I’m best at is not doing anything at all. I just seem prolific because a lot of things have come out around the same time.”

Nice try but no dice, Mr. Varma. The publishing game may not have always been kind to him (“The problem is that publishers always seem to want me to produce something else first when I approach them with an idea… and they specify exactly what they want too!”), but Shree’s mantra has been ‘Just keep writing.’ And just keep sending works off to various competitions.

“I have a compulsive urge to send entries to contests – I don’t know why,” he laughs. “I started small, with a couple of short stories, but by the time my play The Dark Lord (1986) came second at a British Council competition and Bow of Rama (1993) won the Hindu-Madras Players Playscripts contest, I was safely into contest mode.”

His recently-published second novel, Maria’s Room was longlisted for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize and his recently-staged play Midnight Hotel was longlisted for the Metroplus Playwright Award, leading the author to ruefully refer to himself as the ‘Longlist expert’.

But Shree has a whole lot more than a proclivity to land himself in longlists going for him. The veteran journalist began his career with Indian Express in Mumbai and hung out with the likes of Amjad Khan (who spouted shayari to him), Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand (who invited him to join a political party he was starting) while writing for a film paper, Cinema Today, owned a small press and even started his own magazine at one point. He’s also taught journalism and English Literature at his alma mater Madras Christian College, and for the last 11 years, Creative English at the Chennai Mathematical Institute.

“I do enjoy teaching, and I find that science students often come up with more out-of-the-box thinking than lit students do,” he says, thoughtfully. “I love encouraging people in whom I sense talent for writing – I literally pester them to write, actually!”

Other loves include magic (“I used to do illusions all the time as a kid”) and the spooky and fantastical (“Those are recurring themes in my work, though I never had the courage to put in an actual ghost until Midnight Hotel”), music, especially classical (“I love Shree Raga, it brings tears to my eyes – and I’m not just being self-obsessed!”) and the big one, movies (“Movies have always been a major inspiration… before I die, I want to make a movie.”)

In typical Shree style, he tells me how he’s actually converted a couple of his works into scripts for filmmakers, but nothing panned out (so, naturally, he just went and wrote a couple of novels in the interim.) He jokes light-heartedly about Three Monkeys, the ‘unfortunate’ novel that always ends up being put on hold (checkmated?) while others take over (Maria’s Room, for example), his non-fiction book on Chennai requested by a publisher that he never gets around to writing (“It hangs like a terrible shadow over me,” he says mock-theatrically. “With my last breath I’ll say, ‘That Chennai book…’”) and his up-coming novel on Chennai, The Gayatri Club that Chennaiites will see a lot of familiar characters in (“The eccentric ones won’t be mentioned by name,” he says with a wink).

But he turns serious as we talk about his fascinating lineage – as the grandson of Sethu Lakshmi Bai, Maharani of Travancore State, and great grandson of the famous artist Raja Ravi Varma.

“I’m really proud to belong to that family – I believe my cousins and I have all inherited a certain artistic sensibility, and also an entire mythology of stories, some of which went into my first novel, Lament of Mohini,” he says, “But sometimes it’s difficult when that heritage is applauded more than my accomplishments.”

Well then, here’s to Shreekumar Varma, writer, Longlist expert, teacher and bonafide Chennaiite (“Chennai’s my home, Kerala’s my soul”). May your chess game of novels, plays, short stories and poetry continue uninterrupted, and may movies be added to the list very soon.

Factfile

–          Shreekumar is a vocal supporter of the Right to Read campaign, and at his request, two of his works, children’s book Devil’s Garden and novel Maria’s Room are now available in audio format.

–          In 2004, he was the recipient of the Charles Wallace fellowship and spent three months in Scotland. That is the inspiration for one of his many works in progress, the novel Indian Scotch.

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    April 11, 2010 · 12:28 am

    Article: Remains of the Day

    JERASH Where touristy souks and the sprawling cultural centre of the Roman Decapolis of Gerasa, complete with amphitheatres, temples and baths, happily co-exist

    Walking into the ruins at Jerash feels a little like tumbling down the rabbit hole with Alice.

    One moment you’re in a grossly commercial, touristy souk at the heart of modern-day Jerash, the next, you’ve been transported to 1 AD, to the unexpectedly sprawling cultural centre of the Roman Decapolis of Gerasa, complete with amphitheatres, temples, baths and more.

    Rightly touted as one of the largest, most well-preserved ruins of a Greco-Roman city, the remains of Gerasa are remarkable in more ways than one. The sheer size is mind-boggling — we plan to spend an hour there, expecting to saunter casually through a cluster of old buildings. Instead, we end up trekking for close to four hours in the mid-day heat through ancient, colonnaded main roads, the smooth stones of which still bear the marks of chariot wheels that travelled over them thousands of years ago.

    On either side, the towering columns bear beautiful Greco-Roman carvings, as do the stone water troughs placed at regular intervals (for those hard-working chariot horses). So does the ornate fountain and intricately-worked Nymphaeum (a monument to water nymphs) we pass along the way. We climb up and perch, almost dizzy, at the topmost seats of the soaring Southern Theatre, and listen in fascination to the old Jordanian bagpipers at the smaller Northern Theatre.

    We stand and marvel at the gorgeous Oval Forum, surrounded by tall columns, once the bustling marketplace of the city. We go up the endless steps to the beautiful temple of Artemis at the highest point of Jerash, past its palatial portico and up to the sanctum sanctorum, as our guide fills our ears with stories of the mighty goddess of the hunt.

    This is no museum; Jerash is one of those rare locations where history comes alive vividly. As you walk down those uneven stone pathways between rolling, grassy plains, you can see the city as it must have been thousands of years ago, a thriving, wealthy trade hub that flourished between the first and third century AD. You can almost hear the horse-drawn chariots clatter over the stone streets; the hawkers selling their wares at the the main street; the clamour of toga-clad men filling the forums during political debates…

    Perhaps the most striking aspect is how well-preserved the city is — buildings, roads and all. The story goes that Gerasa, which was one of a confederation of 10 cities of the Roman Empire known as the Decapolis, was buried in sand for centuries, accounting for how well it seems to have withstood the ravages of time.

    Indeed, Jerash was little more than a sleepy village for the longest time; the magnificent city under the sand was rediscovered only in 1806 by German traveller Ulrich Jasper Seetzen. Excavations and painstaking preservation work continues to this day, and, little by little, Gerasa reappears from its hiding spot. What remains is, however, mostly the cultural and administrative centre; the area where most of the houses were was mostly destroyed, it is said, in a series of earthquakes that rocked the city in the Eighth Century AD.

    Our final stop is the majestic temple of Zeus, and we pause to look down upon the sprawling grass-and-stone vista — the grand oval of columns that is the Forum, the main street, the arches and amphitheatres — that somehow survived those quakes and still stands magically in the midst of the thriving modern city of Jerash. And, we’re just grateful we took that tumble down into this historical wonderland.

    FACTFILE

    * Getting to Jerash is easy. Just an hour’s drive away from Amman, the capital city of Jordan, it is reachable via road by car or by bus.

    * Make sure you give yourself enough time to explore these ruins and the small museums within — at least half-a-day is recommended.

    * Carry plenty of water and wear comfortable shoes — there aren’t many rest stops once you’re in the midst of the ruins.

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    April 11, 2010 · 12:19 am

    How to… do girl talk

    1. The first lesson in girl talk is multi-tasking. Girls came up with the idea of walk-and-talk long before the cellular company did. Also watch-TV-and-talk, cook-and-talk, dress-and-talk, shop-and-talk… you get the drift.

    2. You also need to be able to follow multiple conversation threads at once. Any topic introduced before a girl-gang can — and will — branch into at least five related / random conversations within 10.9 seconds. And, good luck attempting to trace the conversation back to its root even a minute later (A Bulgarian professor of discrete mathematics reportedly spent his entire career unsuccessfully trying to find an algorithm for the madness.)

    3. No girl talk, of course, is complete without The Giggle. Bursting into loud, high-pitched giggles in any milieu (classroom, corridor, mall, restaurant…) is unique to feminine group behaviour (much like going to the restroom in twos and threes). In other social situations, these same women might be heard laughing delicately, as mummy taught. Not when with the girl gang, though.

    4. That brings us to the next big G in girl talk — Gossip. Everyone gossips, of course, men and women, the old, the young and the middle-aged. But girl gangs have it down to an art form. This is the only time you’ll hear silence fall over the group (depending on the degree on exclusivity, salaciousness, etc.) as voices drop to decibel levels a bat would strain to hear, and code language employed that would make an ex-KGB agent jealous.

    5. And finally, the one that confounds men completely — confidences. Girls share secrets and personal feelings to a degree that most men can’t fathom. You don’t just discuss what happened; you thoroughly dissect how you felt, how you think the other person felt, how you think the other person thinks you think they felt, and so on. If you just read that last sentence and knew exactly what was meant, you are clearly a veteran of girl talk.

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    March 17, 2010 · 12:58 pm

    Interview with… William Barton

    William Barton doesn’t just play the didgeridoo; he makes it sing like the kookaburra, he makes it hop like a kangaroo, he makes it dance like a hip-hop artiste, he makes it scratch like it was a DJ’s turntable.

    The talented young didgeridoo player — considered one of Australia’s finest — was in Chennai recently for a special concert, ‘Songlines of Australia’, as part of his tour of India (including a performance at the Hockey World Cup in Delhi), organised by the Australia-India Council.

    The concert might have been in the plush environs of the Asiana Hotel, but for an all-too-brief half-an-hour, Barton transported the audience to the rugged Australian bush, conjuring a vivid soundscape of its bird songs and of the wind rustling through its trees.

    “The didgeridoo captures the raw resonance of the Australian outback through its deep tones,” he said during an interview earlier in the evening (there was plenty of time to spare since the concert started nearly two hours late). “It’s the branch of a tree that comes alive when you put your breath into it.”

    The instrument has been an integral part of ceremonies of the native tribes of Australia for centuries, accompanying the ‘song man’ as he sang the ‘dream-time story’, the Aboriginal legends of the seasons and rituals. Barton carried on this storytelling tradition of the instrument during the performance, telling tales through the didgeridoo, and of the didgeridoo.

    He told old-world stories by recreating the sounds of dingo dogs and kookaburras and of ‘papa, mama and baby joey kangaroos’ hopping (his free hand ‘animating’ the sounds with lively finger actions). And then, he segued seamlessly into very contemporary stories of hip-hop dancers (his fingers doing a little dance on the side) and an amazingly-creative piece on a ‘Hitchhiker’s Nightmare’, where the didgeridoo mimics the sound of vehicles whizzing by the hapless hitchhiker as he walks on and on and on…

    “Songlines (the song-style of a particular family group) interconnected the different tribes in the old days; in the modern context, these songlines can connect us to the Western world,” said Barton, who has collaborated with jazz, heavy metal, hip hop, rock ‘n roll artistes as well as a number of the world’s leading philharmonic orchestras, and performed at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. “I’m passionate about connecting the world through the universal language of music.”

    His own musical influences growing up in Mount Isa, Queensland, included everything from opera (his mother was a self-taught singer) to AC/DC (like any other head-banging teenage Aussie boy). But the greatest influence was his uncle, an elder of the Waanyi, Lardil and Kalkadunga tribes, who taught him to play the didgeridoo at the age of seven. He died when Barton was just 11, but his legacy lives on with the young man in his music, and in the 60-year-old didgeridoo that he keeps with him.

    “In traditional law, when an elder passes away, his didgeridoo is broken up, but they let me keep it as a special case,” Barton said. “I don’t usually travel with it because it’s getting old, but I take it to special gigs — out on the Australian bush, to Carnegie Hall, the London Philharmonic, and now to India — so the history is captured in it.”

    He told other traditional stories too — of how he learnt to make his own didgeridoo from his father, for instance: “The didgeridoo is hollowed out naturally by termites, so you go out into the bush, find the tree you need, cut it, remove the bark, then make a mouthpiece from beeswax — after tapping out the termites first, of course!”

    And his music said the rest, as he played on the electric guitar (his ‘second musical voice’) and the didgeridoo simultaneously, heavy metal riffs and soulful intros somehow merging perfectly with the deep-throated percussive notes of the didgeridoo. Fusion with Indian music is up next on his to-do list, but we’ll have to wait until next time to hear him tell those stories.

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    March 2, 2010 · 10:32 am

    Article: To each his own (Interview with Mark Billingham and China Mieville)

    A crime writer who’s also a stand-up comic; a fantasy fiction writer who’s also a left-wing political activist. Put them both together in a room and what do you get? A rapid-fire, roller coaster conversation on everything from avant-garde fiction to rakshasas and assorted monsters, the induction ceremony to Agatha Christie’s Detection Club to falling anvils in Tom & Jerry cartoons.

    Best-selling crime novelist Mark Billingham and fantasy fiction writer China (his parents were hippies and named him after a popular Cockney slang term, in case you were wondering) Mieville from the U.K. were recently in Chennai as part of British Council’s Lit Sutra initiative. Lively, opinionated and articulate, the two quite literally talked up a storm, first during an interview at the British council and then again at the public event at Landmark.

    At first glance, it would appear that they wouldn’t have much in common, but Billingham and Mieville quickly proved that to be untrue. Both exuded self-admittedly geeky enthusiasm for their particular genres of fiction, and a love (and a staunch fight-unto-death loyalty) for genre fiction in general.

    Mark, for instance, said he was a ‘crazy collector’ of first edition American crime fiction, and took to interviewing writers and doing book reviews just so he could get free copies. “Seriously,” he said, straight-faced, “it was costing me a fortune. After a couple of years of that, I decided to try my hand at writing one myself.”

    Giving up on the idea of a ‘comic-crime novel’ (“It’s rubbish”) the TV actor turned stand-up comic turned novelist created what would end up becoming his most famous character  – the country-music loving, world-weary D. I. Tom Thorne – in his very first novel Sleepyhead. “Crime writers use exactly the same tricks as comedians – the way the punchline is revealed is the same way a key piece of information, a clue, for instance, is revealed in a crime novel,” he said. “It’s all about timing.”

    Mieville, on the other hand, quite simply never outgrew his childhood love for monsters, aliens and witches. “People often ask ‘what got you into it?’ and my answer to them is, ‘what got you out of it?’” he said, adding with a laugh, “I’m just more rigorous than they were.”

    The two-time recipient of both the Arthur C. Clarke Award and British Fantasy Award admits to ‘cheerfully philistine piracy’ of mythologies the world over to create his awesome array of weird creatures, such as the half-man half-bird Garuda in Perdido Street Station. “Anglo-American fantasy draws on certain creatures – elves, dwarves and dragons – but what I wanted to do is take creatures from other mythologies, deliberately not concerning myself with their mythic resonance, and do something new with them,” he said.

    At some point, the chat about their work – the filming of Billingham’s Thorne novels for TV, for instance, or how Mieville’s strong political leanings influence his writing – segued into a passionate discussion on how ‘despised’ genre fiction was amongst some readers in the U.S. and the U.K.

    “There’s this general sense of literary fiction being ‘real fiction’ versus all the rest,” said Mieville.

    “The problem is that literary fiction is judged by its very best, while genre fiction is judged by its very worst,” added Billingham. “It just isn’t a fair fight.”

    Mieville, in fact, loves genre fiction so much that he once rashly claimed he wanted to write a book in every genre. “I blame the Internet – you say something once and it’s never forgotten,” he said ruefully. “But I am fascinated by the protocols of the different genres.”

    That’s why for his latest book, a crime novel but set in his fantastical universe, The City and the city, he ensured that he was ‘absolutely faithful’ to the protocols of a police procedural. A crime novel without those protocols, according to Billingham, would be like a Western without a horse, a gun or a cowboy hat.

    “In that sense, crime novels haven’t changed that much since Sherlock Holmes – detectives who have problems with booze, music and can’t seem to form relationships,” said Billingham. “But the protocols have changed in other ways, of course – back in the 1920s there were some preposterous rules such as ‘there can be only one secret passage’ and ‘no Chinamen’!”

    This lively discussion spilled into the Landmark event, ‘Thrill of the Unknown’ with ease. Co-ordinator Shreekumar Varma simply had to sit back and watch as the two took off on another freewheeling –and very funny– chat on novels of the future (“Remixed-novels will become the norm.”— Mieville), the perils of too much research and nitpicking readers (“It’s a novel, not a train timetable.” – Billingham), a running joke on their dislike for Jeffrey Archer’s books, and much more, with plenty of time devoted to audience interaction.

    After all, as they said at the interview, they were here for a conversation with Indian readers. And boy, what a conversation it was.

    BOX:

    You can read excerpts from Mark Billingham’s latest novel From the dead and China Mieville’s latest Kraken on Lit Sutra’s blog: http://www.litsutra.com/

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    February 21, 2010 · 1:15 pm

    Book Recs: Cyrus Broacha’s ‘Karl, Aaj Aur Kal’

    I picked the neon-green-and-red book a couple of weeks ago at Landmark before I’d heard or read anything about it. Its colouring and comic book-type cover caught my eye at first, but I ended up buying it for a very simple reason — I love good ol’ Cyrus and his oddball sense of humour. Always have.  (In the interest of full disclosure, it also didn’t hurt that the book cost about what you’d pay for coffee and a muffin (yum) at Barista. Still more expensive than Chetan Bhagat, of course, but then again, no painfully obvious typos and glaring grammatical boo-boos either).

    Having finished the book, I can tell you that my reasoning was sound i.e.  if you’re a fan of the Cyrus Broacha brand of free-wheeling goofiness, you’ll enjoy ‘Karl, aaj aur kal’. This isn’t really a work of fiction in the traditional sense. I mean, there is a loose narrative structure about two friends Karl and Kunal (quite obviously based on Kunal Vijayakar) and how they met at school in Mumbai and went to college together, and so on. But if you’re looking for story, plot, etc., this isn’t the book for you. This is, quite simply, like having Cyrus stand before you and hold forth for a few hours on Parsi families and opera-loving fathers, St. Xavier’s College and the Mumbai theatre scene, Bollywood, politics and marriage. You can literally hear him stop to take a breath between the lines (he even informs you occasionally that he’s bored and moving on to something new).

    Which means, like any other Cyrus monologue, you have absolutely brilliant moments that make you burst out laughing, like I did while reading it in the middle of a crowded coffee shop recently, and then there are the  over-the-top jokes that make you go ‘meh’ or the excessively rambly bits that you can thankfully skim over in book form. What makes it worth a read overall is that Cyrus’ voice comes across so clearly at all times — down-to-earth, authentic and real. No pretentiousness, no play-acting. There are a lot of Indian writers out there trying to be like someone else in their humour writing — Helen Fielding or God forbid, P.G. Wodehouse, and in the midst of it all Cyrus and ‘Karl, aaj aur kal’ is a breath of fresh air.

    The best best bits of the book come towards the halfway point, when Karl and Kunal go to St. Xavier’s, join Pearl Padamsee’s theatre troupe and then go to NYU for a few weeks to study method acting (your impression of method acting as something serious and pseudo will forever be changed, I assure you). These portions work so well because there is a strong autobiographical element to them; you can hear Cyrus’ own experiences and involvement shine through in the midst of all the nuttiness . That makes them the most easy to relate to bits and therefore the funniest. The early part about their school days tends to sound a tad generic (porn and first kisses and such) though there are some priceless moments — like how the entire class goes around talking in fake Chinese accents after watching a Hong Kong flick in Karate class. The latter half, which can be loosely described as the Bollywood and the politics bit, gets increasingly silly and over-the-top (Karl becomes part of the ‘Pyjama Party’ and they were purple pyjamas with white nadas that indicate their strength and integrity or something) until it loses touch with reality altogether. The ending is annoyingly abrupt, like his publisher said, ‘bas, your time’s up’ and he stopped talking/writing (but the epilogue makes up for it somewhat.)

    If you love Cyrus and you’re up for a good laugh, this is Rs. 195/- well spent. (Random House, Pg. 230)

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    February 19, 2010 · 10:34 am

    How to… Be a Pseudo Intellectual

    1. It’s impossible to be a pseudo intellectual without this important ingredient – hot air. See when it comes to being pseudo, it’s not what you actually do (which is fairly negligible); it’s about what you say and how you say it. Being opinionated is a must, as is holding forth with authority on the latest award-winning smart-person type book / movie (actual reading/watching is optional). But at all times remember to be properly dismissive of popular culture (unless you’re using words such as ‘postmodern’ and ‘pastiche’ while discussing it).

    2. Which brings us to the second-most essential ingredient – words. We’re not talking about just any words; these words must imbue your pontificating with precisely the right degree of pomposity (see what I did there?) without actually saying anything that can be pinned on you later. When in doubt, pepper your speech with big words that sound vaguely French or Italian. Skilful insertion of references to Foucault or Derrida never hurt either. And always keep up with the pseudo word-fads – for instance, ‘paradigm’ is so 1998.

    3. It isn’t just enough to talk right and use the right words – it’s also important to be seen talking at the right places. It’s absolutely essential for the serious pseudo intellectual to be at any cultural event that includes the word ‘avant-garde’ or barring that, ‘experimental’, in its title (art and theatre have particularly high pseudo-quotient). Here’s your rule of thumb – if you can’t really understand it, it’s perfect for you to hold forth on at the next party.

    4. Ah parties, swanky, exclusive parties. This is the pseudo intellectual’s natural habitat. Members of the tribe can be observed clustered in groups trying to out-pseudo each other, generally over a glass of wine and tiny hors d’oeuvres with sufficiently obscure names and origins. Pay careful attention to your attire – smart-girl/boy glasses are an immeasurable asset to the newbie pseudo, as are artsy/smart-people clothes such as raw-silk kurtas or tweed jackets.

    5. Finally, the secret ingredient that goes into the making of a bonafide pseudo intellectual is boredom. Always remember, displaying bright-eyed, bushy-tailed enthusiasm over anything is a big no-no. Once that studied veneer of world-weariness and been-there done-that ennui is in place, you, my friend, have arrived.

    DIVYA KUMAR

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    February 18, 2010 · 11:04 am

    Article: Look who’s on the prowl

    Phishers, scammers and spammers… cyber criminals are out to target people on social-networking sites. DIVYA KUMAR writes

    Building a farm or joining the Mafia Wars on Facebook is just as much a part of your daily routine as checking your work email. Crappy movies, boring parties and bad break-ups are all fodder alike for acerbic Tweets. Pictures taken on your cellphone make it on your Orkut profile page at the speed of light, and padding your friends list is your favourite pastime.

    Our lives today are increasingly submerged in social-networking websites, like millions others worldwide. In the last year, the number of Indian visitors to sites such as Facebook, Orkut, MySpace and Twitter increased by 51 per cent to 19 million (according to comScore’s 2009 report). And where people are, that’s where the phishers, scammers and spammers go.

    “Social-networking sites have become one of the most popular targets for cyber criminals,” says David Freer, Vice President Consumer Business, Asia Pacific and Japan, of Symantec, calling 2009 the year of attacks against social-networking sites and their users. “These sites have a huge number of users (Facebook alone has 350 million), and cyber criminals have a fairly simple modus operandi – go where the people are.”

    Amit Agarwal, one of India’s top tech bloggers and columnist agrees. “The threat is very real,” he says. “Often you read about these things but you don’t know the people affected, but this is actually happening, everyday.”

    For instance, he describes a recent attack on Twitter, due to which passwords had to be reset on a few thousand accounts. “The attack took advantage of people’s innate laziness,” says the blogger. “Many of us use the same credentials – username and password – on multiple websites, which means that the guys at some questionable site you visited, let’s call it xyz.com, can now log on to your other accounts, such as Twitter.”

    Once they have access to your account by any means, your entire contact list becomes vulnerable to spam, phishing or ‘drive-by download’ attacks through links or notifications that are sent out. “By their very nature, social networking sites are about a group of people who trust each other,” explains Freer. “If you get a request to look at photos on Facebook or click on shortened URL on Twitter from a friend, you tend to trust it automatically.”

    Those links could take you to imposter sites that ask you to enter your credentials again (standard phishing), or more sneakily, simply take you to a site that silently download malware onto your system, i.e., the ‘drive-by download’. “Last year, this was the fastest growing form of attack – there were18 million drive-by download attacks in all of 2008; in 2009, we hit that number just between August and October,” says Freer.

    The buzzword amongst experts for these attacks is ‘social engineering’ – using people’s behaviour patterns to target them for attacks. “The actual attacks are the same as what we’ve seen earlier, via email, etc., but the false sense of trust and security existing in social networks makes it easier for criminals to deceive,” says Na. Vijayashankar a.k.a. Naavi, cyber law and techno-legal consultant.

    Third-party applications on websites such as Facebook – those fun games and other time-pass applications you add on – are also frequent offenders, exposing your system to malware embedded in the application itself or in the ad on the side of its webpage. “The bad applications are usually banned after a few reports from users, but on day one of the attack, no one will know. There are 500,000 applications on Facebook, for example; it’s just impossible for them to keep track of them all,” says Amit.

    “A lot of these game apps involve money transactions, so they get your credit card details, and scams do happen,” says Tarun Shan, a 22-year-old student of Hindustan Engineering College, and an online entrepreneur. “People think these sites are so cool and just get so addicted, but they need to be careful.”

    Common sense, it would appear, is the only real defence against these attacks (and an up-to-date anti-virus software on your system, of course). For instance, research shows that an alarming number of users on social-networking sites add people they don’t really know as friends. “Don’t get into a mad race to add more friends just for the sake of it,” says Naavi. “Use some sort of screening process when you get requests from people you don’t know.”

    Be cautious about opening any weird links from people already on your friends list. “If you’re getting unusual messages from a friend, send them a note asking them about it,” says Freer. “And always be wary of short URLS which can mask malicious sites.”

    And don’t be lazy – educate yourself. “Most of these websites are doing all they can to protect you, but you have to do your bit as well,” says Amit.

    Top tips

    1. Be wary of adding strangers to your friends list
    2. Be careful while clicking on shortened URLs
    3. Use strong passwords. Create different passwords for different accounts
    4. Be cautious while using third-party applications and sharing private data with them
    5. If you’re getting unusual messages from a friend, send her a note about them

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