Is Banning Books Justified?

Thank you Blogadda for picking this post for the Tangy Tuesday posts!

The Mumbai University recently got removed Rohinton Mistry’s book, "Such A Long Journey", from the syllabus upon facing pressure from the young cub, Aditya Thackeray of the Shiv Sena, who, sort of, made his debut with this roaring success in the political landscape in the city of Mumbai. Read about it here.

While all authors, bloggers, free-spirited readers of the modern world are up in arms against the banning of books and censorship in any form, I have some "hatke" views on this subject.

Before we get to the subject of banning books, let us examine why an author undertakes to write a book in the first place. An author would’ve been just another creature walking this planet had he no urge to tell all that is in his mind, waiting to be told, wanting to be said and itching to be devoured by hungry minds. It could be an amazing story of a person or the tale of a spirited struggle of the people of a certain era, that one encounters in life.

An author of a book may not have taken all the efforts to write, re-write, edit the matter to be narrated, if there hadn’t been such lovely creatures called ‘readers’. Lastly, the author wouldn’t have been able to get his created work to the voracious devourers of the printed word without the existence of the publishers, who don’t necessarily read the book, but certainly have all that it takes to judge whether people would shell out money to buy the book. So it is that from being just an idea in someone’s mind to the writing of a book that gets published and is available for sale at a swanky book store in the city is itself, such a long journey!

Hey, but the journey is not yet over, my dear friend! The book’s got to be launched, sold, reviewed by critics, marketed, publicised, talked about, debated, loved or hated - and does all this really mean your book sales will soar? Not really until finally, if you’re lucky enough, the book is BANNED! Yes, you read that right – banned! Or better still, burnt in public glare! How many authors can boast of writing books that have been banned? All they can really hope for is to be chosen to be awarded the coveted Booker Prize. Being banned or burnt is the ultimate success of a book!

If you don’t believe me, watch the sales figures of any book before and after a ban. The counter behaves like it’s been administered a generous dose of steroids. I just happened to ask for a copy of the latest Booker Prize winner, “The Finkler Question”, but was disappointed to find that they hadn’t even heard about it! Just a small mention somewhere in the innards of a newspaper doesn’t attract as much attention as a political rally where a book is burnt or torn with a host of TV Channels vying to get the best shot for their “breaking news” edition, does it?

You’ve certainly got it right, Dr Rajan Welukar – giving in to the demands of the goons was surely the best way you could have dealt with the situation you were facing. On one hand the agitated and offended cub has his say, and on the other the author finds more readers and laughs all the way on such a long journey to his bank! Don’t you worry about all these writers - who think they are great thinkers too – they will vent their anger, rant about losing their freedom of speech, appear on television debates, and tell the world about how the book bans are depriving the reader of a marvellous opportunity to enrich the mind. But let me tell you a secret – in their hearts they all pray and hope that some day their great works are banned and they would be the most sought after celebrities on every national TV channel and their book is flashed across as they hide their immense joy and feign to be the victim of some political vendetta. Why dont they respect your freedom - the freedom to ban books - or, more precisely, remove them from the syllabus, that is?

Dr. Welukar, you’ve done a good job – but, I would urge you to go that extra mile and change the way educational institutes function. Stop this age old practice of prescribing books for the syllabus. Students don’t like to read any book that is forced upon them, you see. Have you not seen how these youngsters doze off as soon as a prescribed text-book is opened? Don’t we see how they take immediately to books that are ‘forbidden’ instead? Let the Mumbai University bring about the much-needed change – go ahead and publish a list of banned and forbidden books instead! Make sure to include all those books that urge you to think, to change the wicked ways of this world, to make things happen in your lifetime. They challenge the way we are, they way we think and work – they ask us to change our ways! Well, some of us are sure to be offended by something or the other – they ought to be banned – each one of them. Go that extra mile, Dr. Welukar! There’s nothing better one can do to make people shut off the idiot box and settle down to read a book!

Foo(le)d by a Diet!

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Thanks, Blogadda, for picking my post for the Spicy Saturday posts!

Although, I am not exactly a health food fanatic, i have been taking some interest in health foods along with some of my acquaintances. I get my regular dose of information about what we ought to eat and what we ought to avoid via email forwards. Such emails, however, do not stop me from digging into my favourite Bengali sweets or fried foods. All these messages do, is to tell me that eating fresh fruits, dry fruits, raw vegetables would do us a great deal of good, unlike binge eating and gorging on fast foods like burgers, samosas or doughnuts – and – you guessed, it my favourite Bengali sweets!

Some years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a unique life-improvement corporate program conducted in-house by our company, in which an iota of “realisation” occurred – that God had arranged to produce fruits, vegetables for us to savour in its purest forms. I guess it must’ve been some primitive Stone Age man who invented fire and forced his wife to cook his meal for him! Calling us to shun processed foods, cooked foods and returning back to nature, Urging us to turn into “Vegans”, who eat only raw foods was just one aspect of the many beneficial aspects of life that this unique, useful and enlightening course offered – like pranayam and meditation.

Although one could completely agree with the thought process, it was quite a task to completely give up biscuits, cakes, sweets and more important the home-made meals cooked so lovingly at home! All that one achieved was to increase the proportion of fresh fruits and raw vegetables in our meals and observe a one-day-in-a-week vegan diet to “detoxify” ourselves. While rest of the week one merrily “toxified” to one’s heart’s content!

But looking around, we find many people around us becoming more conscious of their diet and seek to bring about some rewarding lifestyle changes to lead a better life. Take the plight of one such friend, who has largely switched to a fresh fruits diet. “We don’t get any green bananas these days”, he mentioned to me, “Only yellow bananas!”

“You mean the Velchi variety?” I asked.

“No – the yellow as in the ‘golden yellow’ variety. The ones which we initially thought to be some superior form evolved by the laws of evolution - and we even paid a premium for them! They turned out to be ripened using some chemical, perhaps calcium carbide, by scrupulous traders to make a fast buck. So I cannot eat bananas anymore!”

“Cant eat apples either – they apply wax and some toxic red colour to make them attractive”. Soon enough, we got several email forwards telling us how fruits are being pre-maturely ripened using toxic chemicals or waxed and coloured! These mails went around the world a dozen times…

So now the entire universe knows about these malpractices! But there haven’t been any reports of any crack downs on fruit vendors or wholesalers. On the contrary this recent TOI Study about Honey containing a number of antibiotics is another blow to those who may want to use Honey instead of Sugar to sweeten their lives! So what can we expect in future? Steroids in milk? (So our athletes can give an excuse of unknowing consuming some undisclosed ingredients when they test positive at dope tests?) Or maybe aphrodisiacs in eggs? Or better still, we may learn about some secret ingredient providing longevity found in our favourite brand of whisky?

Jokes apart, the question that comes to our mind is: Have the regulators, namely our Food and Drug Administration, lost the plot? Or have they lost their soul - and the very purpose of their existence? Even hard-nosed advocates of government deregulation would bend to their knees, begging them for better regulatory measures. After all it is a matter of our health – which is above everything else in life, isn’t it?!

No wonder we read about citizen activist groups exposing milk adulteration rackets, that dodge these regulators so easily! Apparently, the only way to go for those really concerned by these developments is to follow the footsteps of those, who have already being concerned about the pesticides used in growing vegetables, taken to rural lands to grow vegetables in their own farms and even offer “organic farm produce” to citizens willing to pay a premium for good old natural veggies. One such initiative from Vandana Shiva is NavaDanya.

For Heaven’s sake – let us get what we choose to have. Hey we call ourselves a democracy! Even if we really want to be toxified – let us choose our own toxins – and get us the very same toxins we ordered for – not any other!

The (Mis)Interpretation of Lucid Dreams

Before movie reviewers and armchair experts convince you that the recent Sci-fi action thriller, INCEPTION, is a story that most Indian viewers have found difficult to understand, let me assure you, that it is not so. It is amazing how youngsters are influenced by columnists and bloggers these days and wear the puzzled look like the latest cosmetic fad – coming out with a sulky face with question marks written all over implying they haven’t understood the plot! The truth is that there are as many versions of the story as viewers of this mind-boggling blockbuster.

For those who haven’t watched the movie – it is about how to steal business secrets by going off to sleep and entering competitor’s dreams to find what’s in his subconscious mind and what plans and fears reside there. Then there is a plot to plant an idea in his mind. An idea, we’re told is as potentially dangerous (or was it helpful?) as a virus, bacteria or superbug like NDM-1 or a New Delhi Minister.

Being privileged to mingle with government officials of the central, state and local municipal bodies, dealing with some of the scores of indirect taxes levied in our country, one found that prime-time activities in these offices included discussing how completely they understood the movie. After being offered free tickets by their assessee firms, they confirmed how completely they could understand and identify with the new professional heist who “steal dreams“, for a living!

“In totem” they said! Maybe they meant “in toto”.

Once back in my office, I began to wonder, what is it, that they would have liked about the movie? For one, it could be the profession of the protagonist, Dom Cobb, an “extractor of dreams”, may have had many similarities with theirs. To begin with, both enjoyed the perks of sleeping on their job! With a lucrative offer from warring business barons, Cobb designed joint-dreaming, sort of like team-work. Ditto in Government offices, one learnt.

Secondly, the more the team dreamt together, more were the chances of extraction - of real-life moolah, of course. So as not to provide spoilers, one would not elaborate how it worked with the on-screen characters, but let me tell you in real life – the longer one slept on an application of urgent requirement of the enterprise wanting to capture the universe with its aggressive business expansion plans, the better the prospects of “extraction”.

Thirdly, if one who has ever been assigned setting up manufacturing operations by getting government clearances, would have experienced sleepless nights and constant daymares, which are difficult to come out of - without a kick(back). All that these wonderful folks could not understand was the need to transgress into dreams?

Such sufferers of lack of sleep may find their way to mendicants handing out potions to induce slumber, very much like Cobb’s team in the movie. Having tried several pills, my professional friends with similar predicaments, recently invited me to deliver a lecture on such mundane subjects as coping with the professional hazards that one often found daunting to overcome in our trade. It was not long before one learnt that none of the participants really wanted to learn any new trick that one may have up one’s sleeve, but that my delivered lecture had all the qualities of the best sedative to put one to the deepest of sleeps possible under the given circumstances for the sleep-deprived brethren, whose projects are always “IN LIMBO” like the deepest dreams in the movie.

One also encountered a completely different view-point from friends, who felt that our local film industry, popularly known as Bollywood, would have done greater justice to the plot! One would have witnessed several romances, once one gets into someone else’s dreams, which could inevitably culminate in lavish marriage ceremonies breaking out into a mass hysterical song and dance sequence, in which one could wed partners of your choice, without really upsetting the reality carts in the real-life world. There is a distinct possibility of “projected characters”, usually in the form of ex-lovers, could fight over the bride at the ceremonial occasion in various joint dreams. The music rendered for the production could be a heist of a kind - although without really having to enter anyone’s dreams. Heists of different hues are, one would bet, debating the need to put one to sleep to enter their dreams, when the preferred modus operandi was to do it in broad daylight under the very eyes of the vigilante forces and concerned activists in public life over a cup of high tea.

Blogger’s Postscript: 1. Inspite of the attempt to convey the meaning of this post to all readers including those who haven’t watched the movie - INCEPTION, it may be a good idea to watch the movie and though, I cannot guarantee that you will understand the plot in the movie, but you will certainly appreciate this post a wee bit better.

2. Then there is this piece i read today in Bombay Times supplement of TOI by Nikhat Kazmi, which may contain spoilers.

The Meter Jam Campaign

I have always been wondering whether commuters can demonstrate their ire against errant auto-rickshaw and taxi drivers for refusing to ferry us to the destinations of our choice. Recently I promised a friend to visit him after my office hours to return a book I had borrowed from him. I was refused by no less than 15 autorickshaw drivers to ply to that destination. I called him up and expressed my regret. May be some other day, I assured him.

On another instance, I was with my wife wanting to return home from our shopping expedition, when the same happened. This time around a friendly Traffic cop asked us to get into the next rickshaw that arrived and told us we ought to tell them to take us wherever we want them to go and not ask them whether they would go! It worked. But I just wondered whether if not for his presence, whether our insistence would work? When I tried it out again – it didn’t! I had to get off huffing and puffing at the adamant guy.

When I received some email forwards providing the web-links to the Traffic Police sites where complaints of such nature (including higher fares etc) could be entered for them to take action against errant licensed auto-rickshaws and taxis.

Here are the links:
For Mumbai

For Thane Area

For Navi Mumbai Area

But frankly I did not try them out. Often I foun that these guys cruise past you at a quick pace making it difficult for you to note down their vehicle numbers! We need to hail them to a halt and get in and note down their number before leaving in future!

So one keeps wondering what can we harassed commuters do if the dadagiri-attitude of the licensed service providers continues unabated?

The recent initiative by Three advertising professionals Jaidev Rupani, Rachna Brar and Abhilash Krishnan, by launching the "Meter Jam" campaign on Wednesday is an answer to this question on every Mumbaikar’s mind.

Do read about the Meter Jam campaign in the links below:

Article in Hindustan Times

The Website of Meter Jam Campaign

Facebook Page

and Twitter Page

Do join the Meter Jam campaign – I am certain it is only the beginning – a good one at that – though there is lots to do - perhaps an extended and intensive campaign - to get what we deserve – a better life in Maximum City!

The C-Words of the day!

The Common Wealth Games 2010 to be hosted in New Delhi, our capital, brings into focus some aspects of India that concern the common citizen of the country – the Big Cs that threaten to engulf our nation – Corruption, Carelessness, Callousness, Compromise! The TV cameras are concentrating on Calmadi (sorry, Kalmadi) ever since the allegations made by channels about rampant corruption in handing out contracts is being aired.

While it is too early to comment about the corruption charges levelled against the Committees entrusted with the construction of stadia, the general reaction is to believe that cash has (Read: Crores have) been made in the awarding of construction contracts! The common man finds it convenient to believe that corruption in such projects is the norm rather than the exception. Why are we such harsh critics of ourselves, one wonders?

But this post is not about the singular Big C – Corruption, which has pervaded our landscape and spread like Cancer - but several others like Carelessness and Callousness. Channels have highlighted the slipshod work carried out like the open electrical wires, which could be a safety hazard for those planning to grace the sporting events scheduled there in October this year.

Even the work related to the profiling of visitors and related security measures to prevent terrorist attacks are behind schedule and may need to be circumvented if the games are to proceed as scheduled, if newspaper reports are to be believed. This means we would have compromised on the security measures as well!

One would have hoped for the hosting of the Commonwealth Games 2010, would have promoted camaraderie amongst participating nations and boosted competitiveness amongst citizens of participating countries rather than the wrong C’s becoming the Central focus! Yes, like Good Cholesterol, there are Good C's too! One can only pray and hope that there is no commotion and the event will be remembered more as a Celebration than a Calamity!

Blogger’s Post-script - If we cerebrate for a moment, the aforesaid Cs are part and parcel of everyday life of our countrymen – but let us concentrate on the Common Wealth Games for now and leave the other manifestations of the Cs for another post – or perhaps, a Book of epic proportions!

Now you too can 'Palinate' !

It sounds like an English word, but isn’t one, proclaimed one and all, when Sarah Palin uttered the hitherto unknown word “refudiate”.

Sarah promptly urged her followers on Twitter, to celebrate the formation of a new word, instead of mocking at her gaffe, pointing out how even William Shakespeare loved to coin new words thus.
“English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!”

One wonders how the world reacted when Shakespeare coined ‘lonely’ in a world that only recognised ‘alone’. They probably had been the well-known bard to do what he was best at – to coin new words. Here is a list of words coined by Shakespeare which are today part of every English speaker’s vocabulary.

The press instead compared her slip of the tongue to the recent Bushisms that we had been treated to not in the distant past. So Sarah was, in a sense ‘misunderestimated’ - to borrow George Bush’s coinage, another word having originated under similar circumstances. Since Bushisms cover a wide range of oral goof-ups, maybe we ought to have a new word for the phenomenon of creating a new word, unintentionally, lets dedicate it to Sarah Palin and call it

“Palinate - v. to palinate – to unintentionally create new words”

But then, we all do use words that don’t exist in the dictionary, knowingly or unknowingly. You may be aware of the vastly common word used by Indians – “prepone”, which incidentally does not exist! Now this word makes a lot of sense and ought to shake away its “non-word” tag to enter all dictionaries right-away. If putting of a meeting is postponed, advancing one ought to be preponed, what say?

While language critics have posted online messages rubbishing Palin’s comparing her coinage to that of Shakespeare, who coined words with distinctly different meaning, unlike her Freudian formation. So a word like ‘prepone’ not only score over refudiate, in that it conveys the intention and have a distinct logical meaning.

And while we used to always get invitations for events, we now begin getting an ‘invite’. “Didn’t you get my invite?” I am asked, to which I cannot resist the temptation to reply, “Anyway, I am busy and would have sent you my ‘refuse’, in any case!” If ‘my invite’ s OK, “my refuse” got to be OK, I guess!

Troubled by the question about “when does a word really become a word”, I had posed this question to the well-known Anu Garg, founder of “Wordsmith.org”, whom I had met during his visit to Mumbai.

A word, according to him becomes a word, the moment it is formed – there is no need for it to enter a dictionary, which it will eventually do if the word is in use reasonably frequently by well-known publications.

Lexicographers have their own standards for admitting words into their dictionaries, but they all need the word to be widely used. But celebrities appearing on media channels have a special charm – Sarah Palin’s word ‘refudiate’ made it to the online Urban Dictionary in a matter of days!

“Refudiate: A term used to indicate the underlying racism of the speaker. If you as a racist need another group to give up their culture you ask that group to refudiate their beliefs and culture. Users of this term reject the English language, facts, rationalism and black people.” Sarah Palin asked NY Muslims to "refudiate" their mosque near the 9/11 WTC site.

You can even print a T-shirt and have a mug with this creation on it here!

Writers are not so lucky, though. They’ve got to coin it and then even popularise it before their coinage is acknowledged and widely used for this purpose. Though I have been able to publish my own coined word, “predictament” – a predicament to predict - in my blog and my recent article in the Times of India, the word will need wider usage and more appearances, before it enters a dictionary. Do let me know if you find it in a dictionary you use!

Blogger’s Post-scripts:

1. 1. Sarah Palin’s popularity in India was soaring in late 2008, but was shocked to see a restaurant serve Palin Dosa! Read about it in my post “Palin Talk” here.

2. Regular readers of my blog would be aware of my penchant for new words. But for those of you who aren’t may want to read the following posts.

A million words.

Words of the Year 2008

Words of the Year 2009

Aur Kya, Pak?

So after all the best efforts from our side, Aman ki Asha has turned into a Nirasha. I am saying ‘our side’ because I am not sure about the other side. In the past several months, columnists and bloggers have been debating over how to deal with our wayward neighbouring state, which has gone from strength to super-strength in the field of new-age worldwide terrorism – from setting up training camps to nurturing masterminds drawn from military bodies to plan and execute terrorist attacks on innocent civilians and yet escape from international action of the UN, by calling them actions of “non-state actors”!

This ‘non-state actors’ card of Pak, put us Indians in a dharma-sankat of sorts. How can any country fight another, if their home-grown, but not state-sponsored mind you - terrorist outfits - act spontaneously and attack innocent people in other countries? It would need to distinguish between the people of that country from the unlawful terrorist outfits thriving therein. Wont they? While some of us have been insisting that dialogues with Pakistan must continue, others have been sceptical about the “lets talk” proposal, demanding tougher options and discarding it as a sign of weakness.

Some have argued that when we say we must talk, does not mean we must speak “sweet nothings”, but instead talk – talk tough – demand action on terrorists – put a stop to the only visible exports from that country – of fully trained, highly motivated, trigger-happy jihadi youngsters, who have no other options to earn a living. So that is what most of those who wanted talks wished the negotiating team to do – talk tough!

“Stop it – or else…….” Or else, what, one wonders?

Reminds me of a joke about a Texan cowboy who rode on his horse to a wayside inn for a drink and meal and then went off to sleep. When he woke up, he found that his horse had been stolen! He climbed to the rooftop of the wayside inn, fired a round into the sky and shouted “Hey listen you guys! If you don’t return my horse, I will do, what I did in Texas!”.
Nobody turned up with his horse. After delivering the threat on a higher pitch couple of times, he returned to his seat to find the owner of the Inn waiting to ask him “What did you do in Texas, Sir?” “Well” he replied, pulling his hat over his face, “I walked back home!”.

Our situation is no different. We want them to sit up and listen and to take action on what they call ‘non-state actors’. But how committed are they to do it? If the leads from the investigation of David Coleman Headley, were to be believed, we could now say that the officials of the ISI were involved in the terrorism attack on Mumbai. If this is proved….hey wait, but Pakistan will demand evidence - something that their eyes are not designed to spot, even if it were to stare in their face…. that would mean they also have “State Actors” playing along “Non-State Actors”!

Indians will have debates, more debates, talks, and more talks. Some experts are still saying we should continue to have people to people contacts. Sure we can continue our pak-pak, as we usually do over cellphones - never hang up and ask “Aur kya?”, "Aur bata" - It will keep us talking forever!

So there you are –
Pak has “Non-state actors” and “State actors”
India has “State non-actors” and “Non-State non-actors”!
And Pak knows that!

Blogger’s Post-script – Like the remaining Billions of Indians, yours truly is equally at his wits’ end about how to deal with Pak. Without really wanting to hurt any of those, who think they know, of course!