Reading CAN help your writing

Time Out Bengaluru, in my opinion, is the best "local" magazine in the city, for the writing, the editing, the headlines... the ideas! Take this review of the Zeus Sports Bar on Brigade Road in the latest issue.

Read the intro:

Manohar Crest is no Mount Olympus. If you’re in this building on Brigade Road, you will not, like Zeus, be able to cast your eyes upon lands far and wide, watching as Hades makes off with the white-armed Persephone. You might, however, spot someone barely escaping the maws of death – or the left front wheel of a BMTC bus, as Bangalore calls it – near St Patrick’s Complex.

The reviewer, Kankshi Mehta, knows a thing or two about Greek mythology so she's able to add that divine line about Zeus, and Hades, and Persephone. Isn't that clever?

Continue reading and you'll see more Grecian references, including this one:

And now, onto the food. If you’re a vegetarian… well, there really is only one way to put this, and in order to do so, one must turn one's attention to a scene from that iconic insertion of Greek mannerisms into popular culture, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Here, Toula Portokalos’s suitor, a vegetarian, is being introduced to the family, and this is what transpires: Toula: “He doesn’t eat meat.” Aunt Voula: “What do you mean he don’t eat no meat?” Stunned silence in the room. Aunt Voula; “Oh, that’s okay. I make lamb.” Okay, it’s not that bad, but still, vegetarians get slim pickings at this bar.

And the flourish at the end:

Opa!

Here is a definition of opa:  A Greek word that may be used as an ‘exclamation’, or ‘utterance’, or ‘declaration’, or ‘affirmation’ or a lovingly gentle way of telling you to ‘Stop’ ... depending on the situational context. It is a word or pronouncement of celebration; the celebration of life itself.

Kankshi Mehta is one well-read journalist who's also well-versed in popular culture and what a difference it makes! Agree?

• Also read: "If you don't read, you can't write".

All hail The Caravan for giving us...

...some marvellous reads in the latest issue. There's hardly any magazine in India that opens up its pages wholeheartedly to long-form journalism, so those looking for something substantial to sink their teeth into, in a manner of speaking, will gladly devour the May issue.

Look at the treasures on offer:

1. Who the Foucault Stole My Cheez?
A brief but wildly satirical and clever piece by "Timothy Paperphadkar" on the dead-end nature of academic seminars.

2. Paperback Messiah
Who doesn't know (about) Chetan Bhagat? And which young person hasn't read at least one of his books? No hands going up? That's not at all surprising considering India's most popular author in terms of sales has become a youth icon in less time than you can say 2 States: The Story of My Marriage. 

Here Srinath Perur immerses himself in Bhagat's world to learn what it is exactly that the banker-turned-writer has done to get millions looking up to him as their role model.

Here are some excerpts:

Bhagat has said he thinks of himself as 90 percent entertainer, ten percent reformer. This mix ensures that his novels occupy a strange literary register, one in which stories dealing with social concerns are written using the conventions of pulp fiction. In the tradition of pulp, Bhagat’s books employ linear plotlines, simple language and short sentences. Readers speak fondly about how quick-paced Bhagat’s books are and how they never get boring, something achieved by never requiring the reader to pause. Characters do not aspire to the complexities of realism, but are constituted of a few clearly defined characteristics in rough accordance with which they behave. They often behave in disjointed fashion, hurtling along from one mood to the next before the reader’s attention can wander. And they never respond to situations in nuanced ways which might require the reader to pause and reflect; their responses are clearly communicated through word, gesture or expression. To whatever extent possible, plausible stereotypes are employed over fresh and telling detail, freeing the reader from having to rely too heavily on the text. Events in the books can sometimes take melodramatic turns, and depending on what one is used to, this can require a significant ability to suspend disbelief.

*

Interestingly, none of the Chetan Bhagat readers I interviewed seemed particularly aware of any larger message or intention in the books. Kavitha Gopinath, an ardent Bhagat fan, works for a telecom company in Bengaluru and was an enthusiastic audience member at the launch of 2 States. She says about Bhagat, “For me he’s the ultimate entertainer. His books are effortless to read.” Asked about the larger significance of his books, she says, “Honestly, I didn’t realise there was any. It was only when he spoke about it during the launch that I went, ‘Oh. Okay.’”

Read the article in full here.

3. Tales from the Indian Fish Trail
A detailed investigation by well-known journalist Samanth Subramanian into the controversial Hyderabad fish cure. In the great tradition of the old New Journalists, Subramanian also volunteers to swallow the "miracle" fish live so that he can write about the whole experience:

And then, suddenly, it was my turn.

The most disconcerting moment of the entire process was a few seconds of stasis, when Harinath held the fish up, medicine gleaming in its mouth, and I stood with my mouth open as if it were the Eucharist wafer, dimly aware that I could still twist away and run. Then the stasis broke, and Harinath’s hand, full of fish, was in my mouth.

From all the first-hand observation that evening, I must have somehow learned how to swallow right, because the fish went down, tail first, much easier than I expected. It was slippery and small, and although I felt an initial tickle, I think it had expired by the time it was a third of the way down my throat. Right away, though, I realized that it wasn’t the fish that was making people retch; it was the asafoetida, so strong and vicious that tears started in your eyes in that very first second. Then, as it slid down, it burned such a trail of further pungency down your throat that your hair stood on end and your fingers clenched involuntarily. Eyes still streaming, I grabbed at a bottle of water behind Harinath, although somehow, my mind had inscrutably fixed on its own preferred solution to the asafoetida’s pungency: fresh-cut mangoes.

These paragraphs appear towards the end of the article, but the whole piece is bursting with lustrous writing.

4. His Personal World of Sound 
An entertaining profile of Vijay Iyer, the jazz musician from India who's galvanising the New York music scene. I love jazz and I play it often in my car and at work but I would be stumped if I were asked to talk about what makes jazz "jazz". So I am grateful that the author, Akshay Ahuja, has helpfully given me a few pointers:

Today ... many no longer perceive modern jazz as a part of vernacular culture. As Iyer acknowledges, the music has become freighted, for whatever reason, with various anxieties. “There’s a certain kind of guilt factor that comes into play with jazz. People will be like ‘I don’t know anything about jazz...therefore I don’t listen to it, or therefore I don’t want to pay attention to it.’ And part of it is that people feel obliged to be experts on it in order to listen to it.”

Part of the challenge of being a jazz musician today—or a painter or a poet, for that matter—is simply getting people to actively engage with the work and trust their response. “There’s no great mystery,” Iyer says. “It’s just about letting people in the door."

Like most improvisational arts, jazz gains immeasurably from being experienced live. Every musician produces sound not just with an instrument or a set of vocal cords, but with the entire body. A melodic phrase can be formed with the motions of a pair of hands, its rhythms accented by the slide of a foot. As Amiri Baraka wrote of Thelonious Monk, “The quick dips, half-whirls, and deep pivoting jerks that Monk gets into behind that piano are part of the music, too. Many musicians have mentioned how they could get further into the music by watching Monk dance, following the jerks and starts.”

Brilliant! Do read the article in full.

*

Media students will also benefit from reading about NREGA, India's landmark welfare scheme, which is the cover story in this issue. 

Also, there is a highly educational feature on the latest game the big boys (and girls) play: carbon trading.

Sadly, the computer screen is not the ideal medium in which to enjoy long-form journalism. So if you can, buy this month's issue of The Caravan to savour the goodies. (For those at Commits, a copy has been placed in the college library.)

• Also read: "The man who has proved — literally — that journalism is an art form". 
  

LONG-FORM JOURNALISM SITE
If you are looking for more in the way of long-form reads, here is a site that's right up your alley. The editor, Aaron Lammer, sent me an email this morning after he came across The Reading Room while, he says, he was looking for Indian long-form journalism pieces. 

At Longform.org, the editors "post articles, past and present, that we think are too long and too interesting to be read on a web browser. We started this site to bring together our enthusiasm for both great longform reads and the excellent Instapaper reader".

Check it out here and see for yourself what the Instapaper reader is all about.

How do you write about personal experiences?

Especially when they leave a bad taste in your mouth and smack of racism? Here's a young Guwahati-based journalist writing in Tehelka on his encounter with a Delhi landlady:

“Oh, you guys are Manipuris?” She intended a rhetorical question but wound up reiterating the popular geographical lessons that ignorance has taught her — along with probably another three-quarters of the population. The northeastern states have been muddled and shuffled to form this mess, stripping all civilisational peculiarity that is natural.

To read the article in full, go here.

If you want to be healthy...

...a lot depends on you and your attitude towards a healthy lifestyle, says Madhuri Ruia, a nutritional and Pilates expert who writes a column called Diet Desk in Mint.

According to Ruia, there are three types of mindsets that prevent people from taking a step towards a healthy lifestyle:

The “definitely, maybe” attitude: You have definitely decided to become healthy but keep postponing the day when you will start implementing the changes. It will be the first Monday of every month and...that Monday never comes.

The “It’s just one life...” attitude: So why bother? You believe that this soup, salad and exercise routine is just too restrictive. The health craze is a fad that is bound to get shelved sooner or later. After all, people you know have managed to stay healthy on a paratha, pastry and party-till-you-drop lifestyle.

The “It all comes back again” attitude: It is better to stay fat than diet and exercise. After all, once you stop the diet, the weight will all come back with a vengeance.

Many young people today fall into one or the other of these categories. But I believe if you push yourself just a little every day you can work wonders, whether it is your health or your career.

When I began running on a treadmill at The Zone Mind and Body Studio in Koramangala eight years ago, it took all my willpower to run at a stretch for... five minutes. But I kept at it and gradually I was able to run for 20 minutes without a break. Then I began experimenting with the pace and also the distance. Finally, totting up 2 miles or 3.2K in 20 minutes at 6 mph (9.6K per hour) became a breeze.

Now I find a 20-minute run is very easy but, at 51, I find it difficult to maintain the 9.6K-per-hour pace from start to finish, so I have opted to go for distance. Yesterday, for example, at the gym in our apartment complex, I ran for 45 minutes without a break at the average speed of about 9K per hour and notched up 7K, burning up more than 500 calories in the process. As I said earlier, if you push yourself, you can achieve miracles.

Back to the Diet Desk now. To brush up on your health attitude, and to learn how to motivate yourself, go here.

Why am I asking you to do this? Because the media industry expects you to work long hours and gives you very few opportunities for long downtime, especially if you're a junior. Your health, consequently, is going be a factor in how well you do in your career. So make time for it now when you're still young — 30-60 minutes a day, three days a week. I guarantee this will make a difference.

• Photo courtesy: Mint 

UPDATE-1 

Yesterday, a few hours after posting the item about the role of exercise above, I hit the treadmill at our gym. Normally, after a longish run, I take it easy the next day. But yesterday I wanted to see if I could push myself again and I went at it hammer and tongs. Starting at 9K per hour, I increased the pace gradually till, in the 31st minute, I was running at 10.2K per hour. I topped out at 10.6K per hour and in 32 minutes 18 seconds I achieved my target of 5K. (The video posted above was shot on April 8, 2015. I'm running at 9kmph and I covered 6.2K in 45 minutes.)

But, really, this is not a big deal for people who have been gymming for years. 

In fact, running 12K over two days can be likened to a speck in the cosmos if you consider the case of Ranulph Fiennes, the Englishman who, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is the world's greatest living adventurer. He is also the holder of several endurance records. Here's one that is simply astounding, no other word for it:

(FROM WIKIPEDIA) Despite suffering a heart attack and undergoing a double heart bypass operation just four months before, Fiennes, in 2003, carried out the extraordinary feat of completing seven marathons in seven days on seven continents in the Land Rover 7x7x7 Challenge for the British Heart Foundation. "In retrospect I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't do it again. It was [nutrition specialist] Mike Stroud's idea". Their routes were as follows:

26 October - Race 1: Patagonia, South America

27 October - Race 2: Falkland Islands, "Antarctica"

28 October - Race 3: Sydney, Australia

29 October - Race 4: Singapore, Asia

30 October - Race 5: London, England

31 October - Race 6: Cairo, Egypt

1 November - Race 7: New York, USA

Originally Fiennes had planned to run the first marathon on King George Island, Antarctica. The second marathon would then have taken place in Santiago, Chile. However, bad weather and aeroplane engine trouble caused him to change his plans, running the South American segment in southern Patagonia first and then hopping to the Falklands as a substitute for the Antarctic leg.

Speaking after the event, Fiennes said the Singapore Marathon had been by far the most difficult because of high humidity and pollution. He also said his cardiac surgeon had approved the marathons, providing his heart-rate did not exceed 130 beats per minute; Fiennes later confessed to having forgotten to pack his heart-rate monitor, and as such does not know how fast his heart was beating.

• For more on the great man, go here.

UPDATE-2

Ranulph Fiennes is such an inspiration. If he can run seven marathons in seven days on seven continents, surely I can push myself to do that little extra every time I get on the treadmill. So yesterday, May 5, I gave it my all at the gym at our club. I didn't have a lot of energy at the beginning so I kept the pace at a steady 9K per hour. It took me a while — 53 minutes and 25 seconds to be precise — but, in the end,  I achieved my target of 8K, which is the distance from my home to Commits, and which takes me 25-30 minutes by car. I have done 8K on the treadmill before — once, many years ago. But this is the first time I clocked 20K in three days. It is gratifying to know that one can get better with age.

Thank you, Sir Ran!

The bureaucrat who had to resort to using foul language to get minions to do his bidding

The Open magazine issue of May 7 has at least two articles that are worth reading — one by an Australian writer on her experiences of life in Mumbai as the wife of an Indian man. In the other piece, also a first-person account, B. Ashok (pictured below), IAS, private secretary to a union minister, gives us the "B, C and D of governance". Here is an excerpt:

I called for the dictionary again and the librarian reappeared with his ledger in no time. But this time before he could speak out, I blurted out: “Bhen..Ch… D… do you need your job here or not?” Tears streamed down his face as the ledger disappeared and the dictionary made its appearance on my desk. (Hey presto, it works!) “Saaala, ainda mujhe lecture mat dena (Scumbag, don’t ever lecture me again).” Thus ends the first experiment with a resounding success.

 I can't recall ever reading a more revealing article by someone senior in government. To read the full piece, go here.

• Photo courtesy: Open

On marrying a "brown man"

I have always wondered about the ramifications of a white woman marrying an Indian man and choosing to live in India. How does she tackle the questions, the stares, the obsequiousness? Apparently the editors at Open magazine had the same thought and they commissioned an Australian writer in Mumbai to chronicle her feelings and share her experiences about being married to a "brown man" and living with him in India. Her article is both poignant and revelatory. Here are some excerpts:

How foreigners are regarded in India is a curious matter. Our white skin, and the belief that we have power and money, unwittingly elevates us to the top of the social hierarchy. Doors will open for me in India, while at the same time remaining closed for many Indians. Shop assistants will beckon for my attention,while ignoring other potential customers. Everyone wants to have a foreigner for a friend. I’ve lost count of how many times my neighbours have knocked on my door, asking me to meet every relative who visits them. They’re not interested in my husband, though.

*

My husband is neither loudspoken, nor imposing. As a result, he often gets mistaken as my guide. I  remember one day, I was shopping at a stall at the Colaba Causeway market in Mumbai. My husband, who’d been looking at something else, came up to me and asked how I was going. The stallholder turned to him, and roughly told him in Hindi to go away and not interfere in the transaction.

*

There have been ...occasions where my husband and I have visited the hotel rooms of male Indian friends staying in Mumbai, and it’s actually been inferred that I must be a foreign prostitute. The hotel staff did their best to prevent us from going to the room.

Read the article in full here.

• Photo courtesy: Open

The amazing books that made me fall in love with journalism all over again-2

Here's a book about journalists and journalism that reads like a thriller. The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, and the New Journalism Revolution also does a great job of explaining why Tom Wolfe and the other New Journalists are held in such great regard.

But what is New Journalism?

It is a term that was devised to describe the immersive journalism practised by its adherents in the US in the sixties and the seventies. Here's an excerpt from the introduction to the book:

Within a seven-year period, a group of writers emerged, seemingly out of nowhere — Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, John Sack, Michael Herr — to impose some order ... each in his or her own distinctive manner (a few old hands, like Truman Capote and Norman Mailer, chipped in, as well). They came to tell us stories about ourselves in ways that we couldn’t, stories about the way life was being lived in the sixties and seventies and what it all meant to us. The stakes were high; deep fissures were rending the social fabric, the world was out of order. So they became our master explainers, our town criers, even our moral conscience — the New Journalists.

The book is replete with revealing anecdotes and telling quotes. Here's one by Gay Talese on his writing style:

"I am a reporter who is forever in search of the opening scene. I never start writing until I have that scene, and then I become a man in search of a final scene. This all tends to take a lot of time."

Perhaps that is why articles in the New Journalism style were to be found in magazines such as Esquire, The New Yorker, and Rolling Stone rather than in newspapers.

Now here's Truman Capote on his interviewing style when he was researching the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Kansas. His articles, first serialised in The New Yorker, were later published in book form as In Cold Blood:

"Capote never tape-recorded any conversations and never jotted anything down in a notebook during the entire six years it took for him to research the story. After each interview was complete, Capote would quickly retreat to his room at the Warren Hotel and type everything from memory and [stenographer and friend Nelle Harper] Lee's notes, then file it and cross-reference it. 'People who don't understand the literary process are put off by notebooks,' Capote told Life in 1966. 'And tape recorders are worse — they completely ruin the quality of the thing being felt or talked about. If you write down or tape what people say, it makes them feel inhibited and self-conscious. It makes them say what they think you expect them to say.' If Capote felt that he had missed some crucial information the first time around, he went back and interviewed the same subjects over and over again until he had it right."

Here's another insight:

"Capote for years had claimed that he had taught himself to be his own tape recorder. As a memory exercise, he would have friends read or speak into a tape recorder as he listened; then he would quickly write down as accurately as possible what he had heard and compare it to the tape. Over time, Capote claimed, the differences between what was on the tape and what he had written became negligible."

After six years of research into the Kansas murders, Capote wrote a 1,35,000-word story which ran in four parts in four consecutive issues of The New Yorker beginning with the September 25, 1965, issue. "The series was a hit," writes Marc Weingarten in The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight, "busting all previous sales records for the magazine. When Random House published it in book form as In Cold Blood, it heralded the arrival of a new form, what Capote called the 'nonfiction novel', and netted its author $2 million in paperback and film sales."

***
Jimmy Breslin is another journalist given star billing in the pantheon of New Journalism. Here is a pithy observation by Breslin:

"The best story ideas are the ones that sound good after the hangover has worn off."

And here's an eloquent description of his working style:

"[Jimmy] Breslin often didn't sit down at his typewriter until 4 PM or later, and then he'd make a mad dash to his 5.30 deadline... He would plunk himself down at a desk in the city room, hunching himself, according to Tom Wolfe, 'into a shape like a bowling ball. He would start drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes until vapour started drifting off his body. He looked like a bowling ball filled with liquid oxygen. Thus fired up, he would start typing. I've never seen a man write so well against a daily deadline.' By the time he pulled the last page out of his typewriter, Breslin's desk would be covered in a sea of crumpled notes and Styrofoam coffee cups, his copy a spiderweb of handwritten cross-outs and scribbled revisions. ...Editor Sheldon Zalaznick characterised Breslin's deadline crunching as 'absolutely heart-stopping but I never remember him ever missing a deadline'."

Now here's the intro to one of Breslin's greatest pieces, "Marvin the Torch".

"Marvin the Torch never could keep his hands off somebody else's business, particularly if the business was losing money. Now this is accepted behaviour in Marvin's profession, which is arson. But he has a bad habit of getting into places where he shouldn't be and promising too many favours. This is where all his trouble starts."

The New York Times blog, City Room, profiled Breslin a few months ago when he was feted by past colleagues. You can read the post here.

Now back to The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight and a final word from Mr New Journalism himself, Tom Wolfe:

"[Tom] Wolfe decided to pursue a career in journalism, if only because it would allow him to write steadily, without the uncertain financial vagaries of fiction writing. Wolfe wrote letters of introduction to 120 papers all over the country and received only one encouraging response from the Springfield Union in Springfield, Massachusetts. 'They hired me, mainly because they were curious about this guy with a Ph.D. from Yale who wanted to work on their paper,' said Wolfe."

Want to know more about The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight? Go here.

ALSO READ:

• If you want to understand what journalism should be, and if you want to know what journalism can be, read this great book — by a great writer — about one of the world's great newspapers.

• The amazing books that made me fall in love with journalism all over again-1; An ode to reading; What to read; David Ogilvy on why reading is important; If you don't read, you can't write

• Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez on "Journalism: The best job in the world". 

Dealing with office jerks

We have all had to deal with difficult people in the office, be they bosses or peers. Will understanding the reasons for their obnoxious behaviour help to reduce the pain of workplace conflicts? That is what some managers and coaches are betting on, according to this report in The Wall Street Journal, which was reproduced in Mint today.

Here are some excerpts:

Amid a growing focus on workplace quality, some managers and coaches are now using new techniques to identify the childhood origins of harmful behaviour at work and then rout out those patterns through training or outright bans on bad behaviour.

Sylvia LaFair, a White Haven, Pennsylvania, leadership coach and psychologist, has identified 13 different patterns of office behaviour—and the family dynamics that likely shaped them. Among the types are the “persecutor” who micromanages or abuses others. This person often grew up with abuse or neglect. The “denier” pretends problems don’t exist; this person may have grown up in a family where everyone feared facing unpleasant emotions. “Avoiders” are aware of problems but won’t talk about them. In a tense situation, their mantra is, “Gotta go!” “Avoiders” often grew up in judgmental families with weak emotional ties, Dr LaFair says.

The “super-achiever” is driven to excel at everything, breeding resentment by walking over other people. They were often called on in childhood to make up for family shame or tragedy. Another type, the “martyr”, does his or her work and everybody else’s too, but drives co-workers away by complaining, she says. The “martyr” often had parents who gave up their dreams for the child, triggering a repeat of the pattern. Dr LaFair documents the various patterns in a 2009 book, Don’t Bring It To Work.

Do you recognise yourself? Or a colleague?

Read the whole article here. It could help you.

The amazing books that made me fall in love with journalism all over again-1

A.J. Liebling is hailed as the first of the great New Yorker writers, a "colourful and tireless figure who helped set the magazine's urbane style".

I recently finished reading Just Enough Liebling, an anthology of his articles from the New Yorker. Read these excerpts and you will get an insight into the ingredients of great writing.

• From “A Good Appetite” (New Yorker, 1959):

“The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down. Each day brings only two opportunities for field work, and they are not to be wasted minimizing the intake of cholesterol.”

• From “Paris the First” (New Yorker, 1959):

“The graphic arts had their origin in the free patterns made in the snow by Ice Age man with warm water. This accounts for the fact that there have been few good women painters. Lot’s wife, who looked behind her, may have been a pioneer, but we had a head start of several million years.”

• From “Poet and Pedagogue”, Liebling’s magnificently descriptive feature on the New York professional debut of Cassius Clay, soon to thrill the world as Muhammad Ali (New Yorker, 1962):

 “Honest effort and sterling character backed by solid instruction will carry a man a good way, but unearned natural ability has a lot to be said for it. Young Cassius [Clay], who will never have to be lean, jabbed the good boy [Sonny Banks] until he had spread his already wide nose over his face.”

A.J. LIEBLING "CHANGED THE RULES OF MODERN JOURNALISM, BANISHING THE

DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN REPORTING AND STORYTELLING, BETWEEN NEWS AND ART".

• INTRO from Liebling’s “The World of Sport” (New Yorker, 1947):

“A police reporter sees more than he can set down; a feature writer sets down more than he possibly can have seen. I was eager to get a good job as a police reporter after I took my degree. As a maraschino cherry on the sundae of academic absurdity, the degree was entitled Bachelor of Literature, although what literature had to do with rewriting the [New York] Times paragraphs I never found out. I went swimming on commencement day.”

• CONCLUDING PARAGRAPH from Liebling’s “The World of Sport” (New Yorker, 1947):

“One night some boy with pimples in his voice called up from Brooklyn to tell the Times about a particularly unfascinating [basketball] contest between two Catholic-school fives. I took the call and noted down all the drear details until I got to who was the referee. 'Who was he?' I asked. 'I don’t know,' the kid said, 'and anyway I ain’t got any more nickels.' So he hung up. We couldn’t use a basketball score in the Times without the name of the referee, so I wrote in 'Ignoto', which means 'unknown' in Italian. Nobody caught on, and after a while I had Ignoto refereeing a lot of basketball games, all around town. Then I began bragging about it, and after a short while my feeble jest came to the ears of [the sports editor Major] Thomas.

“ ‘God knows what you will do next, young man,' he told me after the first edition had gone to press on a bitter night in March. ‘You are irresponsible. Not a Times type. Go.'

"So I lost my first newspaper job.”

If you want to know more about the book, go here.

• ALSO READ: "The amazing books that made me fall in love with journalism all over again-2"

How NOT to write a profile

The IPL controversies have led to many names being dragged in the mud, perhaps deservedly so. But did Sunanda Pushkar have to be lambasted in this fashion in the Outlook issue of April 26? Here are a couple of excerpts from Vrinda Gopinath's profile of the woman labelled — in a pull-quote — "the P3P queen of Masala Dubai":

Her skills in occasionally getting well-known sponsors made her rivals green with envy but the snide bitching barely fazed her. Says a former rival acidly, “Sunanda would claw her way to a sponsor and have him eating out of her hands, she was not a girl’s girl.”

*
Sunanda-watchers in Dubai say it was around this time she adopted her new style statement—Dubai flash trash of peroxide hair streaks, heavy make-up, razzle-dazzle, seductive couture, false eyelashes, chrome nail paint, and Louis Vuitton victimhood. It was a sign of her arrival in the league of the neo-rich tycoons.

Some of the facts in the article are possibly true. But most of the writing seems to be speculative; plain bitching, in my view.

• On the other hand, Shoma Chaudhury has tried to present Sunanda's side in this interview in Tehelka (April 30). Chaudhury also takes the media and the rest of us to task. Here's an excerpt from the introduction:

A deep and unthinking misogyny has underscored all the reporting on her. Her real crime is that she is an attractive 46-year-old widow, who is bright, vivacious and hot — in the way only those women can be who have a comfortable relationship with themselves; who understand that beauty does not preclude one from being kind; or protect one from sorrow. If the media had wanted to try the two [Sunanda and Shashi Tharoor] for financial impropriety, it should have stuck to doing that. Instead, all of it has become an ugly spectacle about a society trying to decide what women are allowed and not allowed to be. Ambition, sass, and self-assured sexiness are clearly high on the list of India’s penal code for women.

Read the full interview here.

• Thanks to Nilofer D'Souza for the tip-off.