When a writer spews venom at subs

GILES COREN

A majority of writers are philosophical about the changes subs make in their copy, but some writers go ballistic when that happens, and Giles Coren, the restaurant critic of The Times, falls in that category.

Read the letter he sent to the Times subs — he was furious because the indefinite article 'a' was excised from the last sentence of his article. Be warned: The email is awash with four-letter words and is not for the faint-hearted.

Here's a "clean" excerpt, one of the few paragraphs not littered with obscenities:

It strips me of all confidence in writing for the magazine. No exaggeration. i've got a review to write this morning and i really don't feel like doing it, for fear that some nuance is going to be removed from the final line, the pay-off, and i'm going to have another weekend ruined for me.

When I was a journalist, I was always a Desk-man (and proud of it) — never have I had an encounter with anyone as severe on subs as Giles Coren. I have to say, though, that while I don't condone his foul-mouthedness and while I hold no brief for his verbosity in that letter, my sympathies are with him. I would not have deleted that 'a'.

This was not the first time Coren was taking on the Times subs. He had lashed out at them in 2002 for changing "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" to "...jumps over a lazy dog".

Another fairly "clean" excerpt from that email:

never ever ask me to write something for you. and don't pay me. i'd rather take 400 quid for assassinating a crack whore's only child in a revenge killing for a busted drug deal — my integrity would be less compromised.

LAURA BARTON

Laura Barton gives us the writers' viewpoint on the Coren controversy in her column in The Guardian. An excerpt:

There is, it must be said, something of a long-standing tension between writers and subeditors. We writers are rather protective of our words, prone to filing late and flouncing about and are altogether a tad precious. In short, subeditors view us as the Little Lord Fauntleroys of the office, and we in turn view them as our evil nemeses, hellbent on our undoing.

So while half of Fleet Street undoubtedly thought Coren a proper wazzock for his outpouring this week, there were at least some of us who sympathised somewhat. Most of us, at one point or another, have mentally drafted what we shall henceforth refer to as a "Corenian" letter, but never quite found the chutzpah required to actually send it.

DAVID MARSH

And, to get an insight into a sub's emotions when faced with a tirade of Corenian proportions, read the response of The Guardian's David Marsh: "Excoriating the coruscating Coren". Here's the intro:

If only Giles Coren had given his email to a good subeditor before sending it, he might have got his point across effectively without revealing himself to be arrogant, petulant, pompous and, frankly, the last person you'd want to be stuck in a restaurant with.

And then Marsh takes on his colleague Laura Barton for the piece in which she defended Coren:

Even those we regard as friends can damn with (very) faint praise. Lauding Coren because "you've taken one for the [writing] team," one of my colleagues describes in today's Guardian how she sees a sub's job: "A subeditor sets [an article] out on the page, cuts the words to fit, checks for spelling and grammatical errors, wanton cursing and factual inaccuracies." Perhaps she didn't have space to mention the coruscating headline-writing skills, visual flair, compendious knowledge and ability to turn sows' ears into silk purses on a daily basis that makes the subeditors who put together the very section that she writes for one of the most brilliant journalistic teams in the business.

All good subs will be able to relate to this accurate description of what a sub brings to the table.

And the final reaction, this time from the Sunday Times sub-editors.

An excerpt:

There was a sharp intake of breath when your e-mail hit the inbox of subs throughout the industry this week — that was after we'd stopped laughing. Not that we didn't think you had a point. Yes, tinkering with copy just for the sake of it and without consultation is wrong. It is disrespectful and arrogant. And we can see why you'd be furious at the loss even of an indefinite article.

There is nothing more irritating than a sub-editor who thinks they know better than a writer, particularly one who cares deeply about his work. But did you really have to be so rude?

Read the measured response in its entirety here: "Sunday Times subeditors reply to Giles Coren".

What's the point of an education if you remain illiterate?

ATLEAST. 

OFCOURSE.

INSPITE OF.

FOR E.G.

JIST (for "gist").

EXPLAINATION.

LOOSE (instead of "lose", as in "to lose weight").

ALOT (for "a lot").

GRAMMER.

"ONE OF MY FRIEND...".

DEFINATELY.

INCASE.

These are common spelling and grammatical errors made not by schoolkids, as you might imagine, but by young people in their twenties. What accounts for this? It's easy to point a finger at the tendency to use "SMS lingo", which is supposed to have obliterated the need to know correct spellings and grammar.

But I think the culprit is our education system.

Neither at the high school level nor at the undergraduate level do teachers bother, I am told, to check and correct spellings in their pupils' written assignments and examination answer sheets. One reason for this may be the inability to deal with, and lack of time for, 40 or 50 or more students. However, I suspect that lack of interest is also a problem.

Also, at school and in college, not enough is done, in my view, to encourage students to read — newspapers, magazines, books.

How are these young people then going to know that 'at least' and 'of course' are two words? Or that you can't write 'for e.g.' because e.g. stands for 'exempli gratia', which means 'for example'? Or that the correct phrase is, "one of my friends..."? Most do not know that it is wrong to say someone was so angry he "literally" hit the roof... unless his head actually touched the ceiling.

I am not alone in voicing this concern. Only yesterday, DNA carried a major feature explaining why the decline in standards of the English language is a subject of hot debate today. "Some [teachers] are ready to throw their hands up in despair over the sorry state of the English language as it appears on test papers, project work and assignments done by their students," wrote the reporter, Asha Chowdary. "Some educators however, are stoic about it: they feel that technology has changed the world for both young and old, and language, therefore, has to change with the times."

The report goes on:

Youngsters do not have the time to read a book, an entire magazine article or a newspaper edit. They use abbreviations wherever they can. To make matters easier for them, their cell phones offer predictive text messaging which means that they have to key in fewer letters to get to the word they want, which is perfect for the lazy speller. A tweet can only be 140 characters or less and this means shortening any profound thought they might want to convey.

The best argument in favour of getting young people to pay more attention to what they write comes from educator Nirmala George, who has been an English teacher for 30 years:

There is an argument that language is only meant for communication and, so, there is no need to learn it thoroughly. I would say, why learn a language then? We might as well go back to sketching stick figures or drawing objects to communicate what we want to say. It is very important to learn a language well. The problem that we find in schools today is that children know words but are unable to express themselves right. They have not learnt how to structure a sentence right.

And Asha Chowdary, the reporter, sums up well: "The key, say most educators, lies with the teachers and the parents. They have to encourage youngsters to read, to think deeply and write thoughtfully. Language may be evolving, but we have to learn to blend the past and the present, for the best communication possible."

Read the news report in its entirety here: "Keeping it short and simple" (Page 7).

And read the sidebar, too, in which educator and columnist Arul Mani makes a caustic comment about teachers who don't know their job:

Young readers blessed with English teachers who give notes and insist on their writing exam-answers as they were dictated in class must stockpile and throw decaying vegetables till these practices come to a stop. Some part of the larger problem arises from the fact not enough English teachers have a reading life, and tend to operate in terrible fear of putting a foot wrong as a result.

What do you young people have to say?

• Illustration courtesy: Someecards.com (thanks to Commitscion Sanaa Abdussamad)

***

"This is a problem here in Canada, too"

Shagorika Easwar, editor of the Toronto-based Desi News and CanadaBound Immigrant comments: Of course it is [a problem in Canada, too]. And it is one of my pet peeves. Your/you're, its/it's, cd's and dvd's for sale, you all/you'll...Ohhhhhhh, look at what you got me started on!

It has, of course, lots to do with a lack of reading as you say — remember what you wrote about reading more to hone your writing? If you don't see how it is written and rely only on what you hear, these errors multiply.

It has also to do with a lack of emphasis on spelling and grammar in schools — at least here. Kids here would faint in shock and horror if they were to see good old Wren and Martin. I still remember an essay [my older son] Tejas wrote back in grade four, soon after we moved to Canada. His teacher gave him full marks and wrote a whole paragraph, praising it in glowing terms. I was really pleased when Tejas showed it to me, until I noticed a few spelling errors that hadn't been marked. At the next parent-teacher meeting (which happened to be just a day or two after), I brought it up with Mr Ciavone (known to all as Mr C). You know what he said? They don't like to mark spelling errors in creative writing assignments! Spellings are for spelling tests. In creative writing, the focus is on development of ideas and the style, etc. That pointing out spelling errors discourages a child.

We grew up with teachers telling us things like, "I before E, except after C". Quaint as it sounds now, it was a great way to remember a basic rule.

And then you also have language being tested in multiple choice format that can be fed into computers to be corrected. How else do students score 100 per cent in English? Or even history? And that's not just here but in India, too. I have nieces in Delhi who regularly max their papers.

As for "for e.g.", I remember a teacher at Sophia's reading out from the day's newspaper and asking us what was wrong with "the hoi polloi". Hoi polloi, she went on to tell us, meant the people, the common masses, and therefore, it should be just hoi polloi, not the hoi polloi, which made it the the people!

***

"I was reminded of my days as an English teacher"

Senior journalist Pratibha Rao comments: Reading this piece on spellings and grammar reminded me of my days as an English teacher. A student of mine spelt Rome as "roam". Soon after leaving school, she got married and went to Venice for her honeymoon, while I have yet to visit the place. Irony of fate? I hope her trip to Venice taught her how to spell Rome correctly!

I have, of late, been toying with the idea of compiling an 'Encyclopaedia Erratica' — a compendium of common (and not so common) errors.

***

"It's shocking how poor English skills have found their way into the Indian media"
 

• Faye D'Souza (Commits Class of 2004) , who's now an anchor and assistant editor with ET Now in Mumbai, comments: It's shocking how poor English skills have found their way into the Indian media. Gone are the days when we referred to to Doordarshan to find out the right way a word should be pronounced or used.
  
  Now, our television news channels and anchors misspell and mispronounce almost all the words in the dictionary and worse still is the excuse that this is the way the language is evolving because speaking proper English will make us sound elitist, alienating us from a large section of our viewers who will not be able to identify with us.
  
  I personally believe it's because of a lack of talent. There just aren't as many young recruits out there who speak clear, good English to feed the demand of this massive industry.
  
  I hope that will change in the future with more colleges like Commits turning out bright, able students who cross their T's and dot their I's. In the meantime, let's cross our fingers hoping that this current mediocrity doesn't become the norm.

***

"Of course, those teachers are to blame"

Sneha Abraham (Commits Class of 2011) comments: I have always hated predictive text messaging because I need to write my English the way I want it. And not to blow my own trumpet but in spite of using SMS lingo in text messaging, I always make sure that I do not use it when writing anything important. I cannot believe that there are some people out there who cannot separate their mobile phones from their answer papers.

And, of course, those teachers are to blame. Wherever an error is seen, it is to be corrected as modestly as possible. To not do this is to misguide children as to the correct spellings and grammar.

Copying and pasting. And an apology — of sorts — from India Today.

An apology from none less than Aroon Purie.

Here is the opening paragraph of his "From the editor-in-chief" column in the latest issue of India Today (Oct. 25):

Jet lag is clearly injurious to the health of journalism. I was in America and still a bit bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived when we took an unusual decision: to split the cover. This is jargon for changing the cover for some editions; so while the content of the magazine remained the same worldwide, the cover that went to our readers in South India displayed the phenomenal Rajinikanth while our other readers saw Omar Abdullah on the cover. This meant writing two versions of 'Letter from the Editor'. Not being an acknowledged expert on the delightful southern superstar, I asked Delhi for some inputs. Unfortunately a couple of sentences lifted from another article were sent to me. An excuse is not an explanation. So, without any reservations, mea culpa. Apologies.

Now here's the opening paragraph from Purie's piece in the Oct. 18 issue:

Jackie Chan is the highest-paid actor in Asia, and that makes sense. Besides producing, directing, and starring in his own action movies since 1980, he's earned millions in Hollywood with blockbusters like Rush Hour and The Karate Kid. But the No. 2 spot goes to someone who doesn't make any sense at all. The second-highest-paid actor in Asia is a balding, middle-aged man with a paunch, hailing from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and sporting the kind of moustache that went out of style in 1986. This is Rajinikanth, and he is no mere actor—he is a force of nature. If a tiger had sex with a tornado and then their tiger-nado baby got married to an earthquake, their offspring would be Rajinikanth. Or, as his films are contractually obligated to credit him, "SUPERSTAR Rajinikanth!" If you haven't heard of Rajinikanth before, you will when you watch his latest movie Endhiran: The Robot which has just opened in movie theatres around the world. It's the most expensive Indian movie of all time. It's getting the widest global opening of any Indian film ever made, with 2,000 prints exploding onto screens simultaneously. Yuen Wo-ping (The Matrix) did the action, Stan Winston Studios (Jurassic Park) did creature designs, George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic did the effects, and Academy Award-winning composer A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire) wrote the music. It's a massive investment, but the producers fully expect to recoup that, because this isn't just some film they're releasing; this is a Rajinikanth film.

FROM INDIA TODAY (SOUTHERN EDITION), OCT. 18

And here are the opening two paragraphs from an article written by Grady Hendrix for the online magazine Slate:

Jackie Chan is the highest-paid actor in Asia, and that makes sense. Besides producing, directing, and starring in his own action movies since 1980, he's earned millions in Hollywood with blockbusters like Rush Hour and The Karate Kid. But the No. 2 spot goes to someone who doesn't make any sense at all. The second-highest-paid actor in Asia is a balding, middle-aged man with a paunch, hailing from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and sporting the kind of moustache that went out of style in 1986. This is Rajinikanth, and he is no mere actor—he is a force of nature. If a tiger had sex with a tornado and then their tiger-nado baby got married to an earthquake, their offspring would be Rajinikanth. Or, as his films are contractually obligated to credit him, "SUPERSTAR Rajinikanth!"

If you haven't heard of Rajinikanth before, you will on Oct. 1, when his movie Enthiran (The Robot) opens around the world. It's the most expensive Indian movie of all time. It's getting the widest global opening of any Indian film ever made, with 2,000 prints exploding onto screens simultaneously. Yuen Wo-ping (The Matrix) did the action, Stan Winston Studios (Jurassic Park) did creature designs, George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic did the effects, and Academy Award-winning composer A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire) wrote the music. It's a massive investment, but the producers fully expect to recoup that, because this isn't just some film they're releasing; this is a Rajinikanth film.

So, that's not just "a couple of sentences" that were lifted. That's almost all of the first two PARAGRAPHS. About 250 words were copied and pasted.

Three questions come to mind now:

1. Even if the "inputs" were sent by "Delhi", did they have to be reproduced word for word?

2. Is the person who sent the "inputs" still an employee of India Today?

3. Does Aroon Purie really write the "letter from the editor" column week after week after week?

PS: As is to be expected, Purie has got hell from the writer whose work was plagiarised. "Any man can apologize," Grady Hendrix wrote yesterday in an article for Slate titled Great Writers Steal, "but only the millionaire CEO of a multiplatform media company who is also editor-in-chief of a major news magazine can write an apology that is defiantly nonapologetic."

There's more in the same vein:

This official apology blamed jetlag for the theft, and if that's the case then my heart does go out to Mr. Purie's staff. If this is a man suffering from a narco-klepto disorder (also known as "sleep stealing") then he must be watched vigilantly. Every yawn is a signal to lock up your laptops, every announced nap is a sign that your wallet could suddenly go missing. But the jetlag apology wasn't meant to be taken as a serious statement, it was more of an old school attempt to make the problem go away with a silly, "Whoops, I'm tired!" shrug. Only with the new media, problems like this don't go away. While print journalists in India are said to be unlikely to report on the infractions of their colleagues, the Internet knows no loyalty, and all over India online writers are still tweeting and blogging for a better explanation. 

Hendrix also reproduces the letters Purie wrote to him and to the editor of Slate. And he says at the end, "...as far as I'm concerned this is a satisfactory close to the matter".

But is it? Plagiarism is the bane of journalism and it is unlikely that either his competitors or his readers will forgive Aroon Purie — precisely because he's the editor-in-chief of India's first major English news magazine and the largest-selling — for this blatant transgression.

***
'She copied my article and it was sent back to my magazine as her feature!'

Shagorika Easwar, editor of the Toronto-based Desi News and CanadaBound Immigrant comments: You know, recently, I received an article on heart health from Maharaja Features. It seemed strangely familiar. The more I read, the more it seemed like I had read it before. And then it dawned. It was an article I had written on the subject a few years ago! Their feature writer lifted it word for word, with just two changes. Where I had written about spotting people jogging along Lakeshore Boulevard, she 'saw' them on Bandra Bandstand. She also changed the name of one of the people quoted in the article. Other than that, it was exactly as is. Including the intro para that began with now that heart-shaped candy boxes had been put away, it was time to get serious about heart health. That made sense in March, the month we ran it, after Valentine's Day. They sent the article in August, when  you have to wonder which heart-shaped candy boxes were being put away.

I wrote to Mr KRN Swamy of MF and he responded with something about how they would never use the lady's articles again. And that was that. (I should clarify here that I don't think Mr Swamy knew. His own articles on history and travel are meticulously researched with due credit given to sources. This was one of his feature writers and if it took me a few minutes to make the connection, I can hardly expect him to have remembered an article we carried a few years ago. He gets a copy of Desi News each month as we carry some of their features and she might have seen it there and tucked it away for future use!)

I thought that was bad enough, but this India Today case is shocking. And the man has the gall to try and shrug it off with a half-hearted apology that is more along the lines of "I'm sorry I got caught, BUT... " We all know that politicians have speech writers, that more often than not, the brave, inspiring words they spout were written by someone else. After seeing this, I begin to wonder if editors have ghost writers! Such a shame.

***
'This episode highlights the problems we all face today — delegation'

R. Umesh, partner in a Bangalore-based chartered accountancy firm, comments: A monumental gaffe indeed. But tell me, I don’t know how this works — how would one identify plagiarism anyway? I feel the only way this could have been avoided was for Aroon Purie to write the editorial himself (which is what I presume he should be doing in the first place), right?

This episode also highlights the problems that we all face today — delegation. Just to what extent can you delegate your work? If you cannot, then how do you handle workloads? I have no idea about Aroon Purie's workloads, but I am sure it must be high. This is why we become donkeys at work — because reliability today comes at a premium. This is what I refer to in office as the CR factor (C for capability and R for reliability).  I always say — If I were to choose between two chartered accountants for a job at our office, I would surely go for the one who is more reliable though less capable (even if that means I have to put in extra time).  Generally, you never find a person with the right combination.  In other words, this is the classic conundrum at many offices today. I sure don’t want to land up in Purie’s unenviable position.

***
'Is Indian media indifferent to plagiarism?'

Here is veteran journalist Bala Murali Krishna's take on the issue: "India Today’s plagiarism scandal".

Bala, who is now associate editor with The New Indian Express in Chennai and who taught journalism at Commits as guest faculty when he lived in Bangalore, makes an important point when he writes that the Purie "apology that is a non-apology, the unwillingness to explain the real circumstances of the incident and an unwillingness, over the years, to address other similar allegations, suggest a pattern of indifference at India Today that, embarrassingly, might be a proxy to the entire Indian media".

He then makes a comparison with American media:

The Washington Post stripped [Janet] Cooke of the Pulitzer, The New York Times ordered a complete audit of each and every word written by [Jayson] Blair and published in its editions, and made a determination of the extent of plagiarism and/or unethical practice. It also fired the blogger Zachery Kouwe, who had copied from the Wall Street Journal’s blogs. The Boston Globe, USA Today and others have responded in similar fashion, firing editors, writers and reporters found plagiarizing or indulging in unethical practices.

***
Now I think the only way Aroon Purie can redeem himself and salvage the reputation of India Today is by stepping down as editor-in-chief. But I am not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

• Also read: Why does plagiarism continue? And what can writers and editors do about it?

• And the DNA column that says plagiarism is okay because it is "the ultimate form of flattery" and it has "real (positive) spinoffs".

•  Aditya Sinha, the editor-in-chief of The New Indian Express, was the first media honcho to write about the Purie scandal. An excerpt:

The buck stops at the top... and it will take time for Purie to live down this stupid-mistake-by-stupider-underlings. But that’s good, in a way, if it occasions some introspection and forces some self-regulation. India Today has been charged with plagiarism too many times lately; just ask Canada-based blogger Niranjana Iyer or Anshuman Rane of the UK digiterati. It’s not a coincidence that these victims were foreign-based and that their work appeared online. It seems Indian journalists think that they are immune given a blogger’s distance from an Indian court and the fact the cyber-universe is so vast that the readership of a particular online article is often limited. No apologies have ever been offered to either of these two, by the way, and the culprits roam free to plagiarise again. Similarly, the Times of India film critic, Nikhat Kazmi, lifted from the legendary Roger Ebert for her review of Shark Tale, yet she remains at work for India’s largest media company.

Read the no-punches-pulled column here: "Plagiarise and be damned".

• Mitali Saran, who wrote a weekly column, Stet (Commitscions know what this means now), for Business Standard, dedicated her October 30 post to the Aroon Purie plagiarism scandal — but BS refused to print it. Now Saran has terminated her agreement with the newspaper. What did Saran write? And why did BS refuse to print the column? Read all about it here: "The case of the missing attribution".

• Niranjana Iyer, a writer and book critic based in Ontario, Canada, says India Today plagiarised her blog post and refused to respond.

• And India Today gets more flak, this time for its Goa cover story (November 6), from Vivek Menezes, the founding editor of "an online review of art, culture, news and opinion relating to Goa" — Tambdimati.com: "Another low for Aroon Purie".

Do those e-mail forwards annoy you?

The ones that come with the subject line: "Hilarious!!! You MUST read this!!!!!", or something similar? And where the body of the email contains a gazillion e-mail addresses through which you have to wade IF you want to read the substance of the e-mail?

These forwards are the bane of e-mail users and I, for one, have found a simple way to deal with them. I don't even open these e-mails. I just hit the DELETE key now. And yesterday I discovered there are others like me. Mala Bhargava, for instance, who devoted her column in the latest Businessworld to explain why she hates forwards.

Here is an excerpt:

"... e-mail savvy hasn’t increased much.

"The one thing that has remained an annoyance is the tsunami of 'forwards' that crisscross cyberspace everyday. The well-intentioned individuals who indulge in the pastime of sending their friends jokes, chain mail, presentations, videos, pictures, and more, are convinced they’ve done their altruistic bit for the day. They’re always surprised and more than a little hurt when you tell them you don’t really want these, even if they were amusing. I’m afraid I’m one of those who could totally do without the deluge of forwards from my network."

And then she lists five reasons that should give pause for thought to all the avid forwarders out there. Are you one of them? Reading "Why I Hate Forwards" should cure you, I think.


(Sadly, the "forward" contagion now seems to have spread to Facebook, which is awash with links that come bearing the entreaty: "Hilarious!!! You MUST watch this!!!!!". If you really want us to read those forwards or watch those videos, doesn't it make sense to give us a valid and cogent and coherent reason to do so? Stop with those generic messages already. And if you still feel compelled to send me a forward, get rid of those unwanted e-mail addresses, please.)

JUST DESERTS: Getting our due

A FEW WEEKS AGO, in class, we had a brief discussion during a test about the correct spelling of "deserts" in the phrase "just deserts". Some students were surprised to learn that there was no connection to "desserts". We then discussed the origins of the phrase: "(From Dictionary.com) A deserved reward or punishment, as in He got his just deserts when Mary jilted him. This idiom employs 'desert'  in the sense of 'what one deserves', a usage dating from the 1300s but obsolete except in this expression. Origin: Middle English, from Old French deserte, from feminine past participle of deservir, to deserve; see deserve."

Later I remembered a little feature I had written for Dubai's Khaleej Times earlier this year at the request of editor Patrick Michael. The feature is reproduced below.

JUST DESERTS
Ramesh Prabhu left Bombay (now Mumbai) for Dubai back in October 1988. His first — and last — place of residence in Dubai was Karama. Eleven years after he returned to India, he still has fond memories of the city and his home. Here, he recalls his years as a resident of Karama:

Call it karma.

When I first landed in Dubai to work as a journalist with the Khaleej Times, I was put up in a villa somewhere in Jumeirah. Within a couple of days, I asked to be moved to “civilisation”. I had come to Dubai to learn more about the place, so living in an isolated bungalow, as we called it back in India, was not for me.

As luck — or karma — would have it, a Khaleej Times editor was vacating his second-floor apartment in Karama’s Pioneer Buildings. I moved in very soon after.

I can only imagine what the area looks like now, in the wake of Dubai’s construction boom, but in those days it was a quiet residential zone with three- and four-storeyed apartment buildings and oodles of supermarkets and convenient stores within walking distance.

The great thing about living in Karama then was the home-town atmosphere: we had friends from the subcontinent in our block and in neighbouring apartments, and get-togethers on holidays and festival days were the rule.

Living in Karama had another big advantage: easy access to all the important locations, from Satwa and Bur Dubai, to Shaikh Zayed Road and the Maktoum Bridge.

When my wife and I returned to India, I wanted to name our bungalow, sorry, villa, “Karama”, but this would have sounded strange to our fellow Bangaloreans. So we settled on a moniker that, we thought, would be a throwback to our good old days in Dubai: JUST DESERTS.

We have since moved to a new apartment in a gated community, but the gate plaque bearing the legend “Just Deserts” holds pride of place in our living room even today.

"JUST DESERTS": THE PLAQUE THAT LAY EMBEDDED IN OUR ENTRANCE GATE PILLAR FOR FIVE YEARS BEFORE WE MOVED HOME FROM AN INDEPENDENT HOUSE ON OLD MADRAS ROAD TO A GATED COMMUNITY, BRIGADE GARDENIA, IN J.P. NAGAR, SOME 30 KM AWAY. THE PLAQUE IS NOW A SHOWPIECE IN OUR LIVING ROOM. PHOTO: SANTHOSH C.J.

Plenty of bang for your buck

Think Jackie Chan on steroids. Imagine him speaking a mixture of Bhojpuri and Hindi. And picture him performing his trademark stunts in one of his many fight scenes.

And you have Salman Khan in Dabangg.

Jackie Chan never takes himself seriously in his movies. Also, we know he is having a great time up there pretending to act.

Ditto Salman Khan. In Dabangg, at least.

That, I think, is one of the reasons I enjoyed watching (most of) Dabbang yesterday.

Dabangg is not a "drama", although there's dramabaazi aplenty; it is not a "thriller", though the movie has its share of thrills (and spills); it is definitely not a "romance", notwithstanding Salman's hook-up with Sonakshi Sinha (pictured left). I see it as a "comedy", really, with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments: Salman using a fireman's hosepipe as a weapon in the opening fight scenes, Salman doing a Keanu Reeves in those same fight scenes, Salman making one of his "Besharam se yaad aaya..." cracks, Salman... Salman... Salman....

Salman is such a towering presence in the film that every frame that does not feature him has you wishing he'd be back. Every Salman-less frame, in short, appears tedious by comparison.

Well, okay, not EVERY frame. Certainly not in the opening sequences of Munni badnaam hui, that exuberant, colourful, full-of-life item number by the oomphy Malaika Arora (pictured right) — though Salman sort of steals the scene when he makes his swaggering appearance towards the end of the dance.

To reiterate, I think we love Salman in Dabangg because he does not take himself seriously; in fact, no one in the movie takes themselves seriously (except Dimple Kapadia and Vinod Khanna — both are hopelessly miscast).

And I think both urban and rural audiences in India have given two thumbs up to Dabangg because, as my wife remarked, here's a film made for Indians in India, not for Indians in the West. (KJo and SRK, I wish there was a way to make you read this.)

Finally, people my age and older will be grateful to director Abhinav Singh Kashyap for making a movie that reminds us of the films we used to watch when we were kids, and for keeping in mind that we are not now able to sit in a cinema hall for three hours or more and so keeping the duration of Dabangg down to an acceptable two hours. Shukriya, janaab!

• Tehelka managing editor Shoma Chaudhury analyses Salman Khan, the man and the actor, in the wake of Dabangg: "Is the measure of this man just a moustache?"

Why I admire Rajinikanth

I used to wonder: The Badshah of Bollywood and other stars of his ilk won't be caught dead without their toupee — they act in their movies bewigged and they come out in public bewigged. How come Rajinikanth is different?

Rajini is happy to play the glam hero in his films — but off-screen he seems to have no problem offering us his real persona, the wig be damned.

Again, my question: How come?

Baradwaj Rangan, the erudite film critic of The New Indian Express, provides the answer in an enlightening profile of the South's biggest star in a recent issue of Tehelka.

He agrees that Rajini’s off-screen appearances can be perplexing to the untrained eye, but he clarifies quickly: "...by untrained, I refer to the non-Tamil eye."

And he elaborates:

We Tamilians, after all, are used to the dichotomy of our heroes looking one way on screen and another in real life. Cinema is a manufactured medium, and it would stand to reason that the faces up there are manufactured too, made up with make-up. ... So we don’t really flinch when Rajinikanth comes to us bewigged on screen and bald off it. He is, after all, 60. Lesser men have been reduced to shiny domes at far younger ages. (Ask me. I should know.) So when, in an audio launch for Robot, Rajinikanth looks his age, looks like the grandfather that he is, it doesn’t frazzle us. He’s not acting now. He’s real. That’s all there is to it.

And then Baradwaj wonders if there is a lesson here for the aging heroes of Bollywood:

Perhaps Bollywood stars — especially the ones in their forties and upwards, some of whom apparently are staving off signs of aging with nips and tucks and hair weaves — can learn this lesson from Rajinikanth, that you can be yourself and your fans won’t stop loving you. On the contrary, they just may come to love you a little more.

And so I learnt two things here:

First, Rajini's attitude is worth emulating. Why should we pretend to be who or what we are not in real life?

Second, there is a difference in the mindsets of movie fans on either side of the Vindhyas.

Do you agree?

If you don't read, you can't write

It's (almost) as simple as that.

Don't believe me?

Here's master storyteller Stephen King on the importance of reading:

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut."

And here's James Ellroy (pictured), the author of L.A. Confidential and many other crime novels, on the same subject in a Q&A published in a recent issue of Time magazine:

How did you acquire the knack for writing such colourful lingo?

I love scandal language. I love racial invective, language that is vulgar. I spent my early life reading, reading, reading, reading, reading and reading. I read crime books primarily, so I know cop jargon.

Are people born good writers?

No. You have to read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read and read. As you read, unconsciously you assimilate the rudiments of style and technique. And when it comes time for a person to begin to seriously write, they either have it, or they don't.

I have been saying something in similar vein to all my students, but Stephen King and James Ellroy have put it much better than I ever could. While both are referring, I think, to the writing of fiction, I believe what they say applies to all forms of writing, and that is what I emphasise at Commits.

Which brings me to the question that bothers me big-time: Why do so many young people give short shrift to reading?

Many youngsters today want a career in media. That really makes me happy. However, for the life of me I can't figure out how someone who doesn't like reading can be a good journalist.

Okay, so you don't want to be a journalist. I have no quarrel with that. Now, I also happen to believe that if you can write and think like a journalist, you can succeed in any media field. And this is what I tell every batch at Commits. But if you want to write and think like a journalist, close reading is vital. A devotion to words is essential. A love of books is fundamental. Reading should be like breathing. Then the writing will follow. And it will flow. Unhesitatingly. Copiously. Gracefully.

If I were a betting man, I would stake my entire library on it.

• Also read: "An ode to reading", "Reading CAN improve your writing", and "Why writing should be about 'you' ".

• Shagorika Easwar, editor of Desi News and CanadaBound Immigrant, comments: I absolutely, totally, whole-heartedly agree — the only way to improve your craft if you are a writer is to read. Or read, read, read, as you say!
  
  It saddens me that so many don't read. That newspapers around the world are losing circulation because people get their news fix on television or while driving home from work. Even those who want a career in media dream of becoming television anchors and so think they don't need to read or write. That is why you have the literate illiterate. When they speak, they are fine, but you only have to get a written submission from them to see the flaws.
  
  This problem is not restricted to the young, though. We get press releases from various tourism departments in India — you'd think they'd hire the best of the best to do the selling — but one I got recently talks about a temple being "worldy known". I kid you not.
       
  Which is one of the reasons why I love the way you teach. Not just through course books but by throwing a vast variety of books their way. Something, somewhere will stick!
       
  

  A devotion to words is essential. A love of books is fundamental. Reading should be like breathing. Then the writing will follow. And it will flow. Unhesitatingly. Copiously. Gracefully.

  
  Lovely.
  

What was the Emergency like?

The Emergency, which lasted 21 months beginning June 25, 1975, was a dark period for journalism in India. I had just finished school at the time but I remember my father, a journalist with PTI then, talking about how life had become difficult with government-appointed censors calling the shots at media organisations.

So what was the Emergency really like for journalists?

Ajay Bose had just become a reporter with the Patriot then. He later co-wrote a definitive book about the period. Last month, in the Independence Day issue of Mint Lounge, he was interviewed by Himanshu Bhagat. Here's an excerpt:

HOW WAS CENSORSHIP ENFORCED?

Initially, you actually had to take your copy to the censor and show it to them. They would then ink the offensive stuff out. But the process was too cumbersome and it didn’t last too long. The babus had a typically mindless approach and would leave the “damaging” stuff intact while cutting out what was “innocuous”. So then the papers were asked to censor themselves and not publish anything “anti-national”. All the papers had to comply. The government could do anything, just like in a dictatorship. The courts were completely with them. And the police would never support you.

Can you imagine working under such conditions?

Read the full interview here: ‘The office was in absolute darkness’.

And since this is the I-Day issue, Lounge has made a special effort to put together what I consider the best collection ever of articles and columns on free speech. Read the whole series here. I especially recommend "You are not free" and "A nation talking to itself".

"YouTube is a miracle for cricket fanatics"

Rahul Bhattacharya, author of the cricket tour book Pundits From Pakistan, writes a monthly cricket column for Mint Lounge. He has a felicity with words that makes his articles a delight to read, even if you're not a cricket fan. On August 28, he wrote the cover story for Lounge, "Time travel cricket". The opening line says it all:

Cricket in the age of YouTube... is cricket in another age. 

Bhattacharya goes on from there to describe "the sheer athleticism of Garry Sobers, Majid Khan’s disdain for footwork, Bedi’s silken flight" and explains why YouTube is a miracle for cricket fanatics, "encouraging us to revisit the game’s greatest and often changing our idea of them".

Cricket fans are already tweeting and blogging and emailing links to this article.

BACK TO THE PAVILION: GREG CHAPPELL BOWLED FOR A DUCK BY KARSAN GHAVRI WITH AUSTRALIA CHASING 143 FOR VICTORY IN THE THIRD TEST IN MELBOURNE (1981). THIS WAS ONE OF INDIA'S MOST MEMORABLE WINS. ENJOY IT ALL OVER AGAIN ON YOUTUBE.

I'm sure they are also going to YouTube and checking out the videos recommended in a sidebar in Lounge. For those keen on watching four "memorable encounters on YouTube from the time before live telecasts", here's the list:

• West Indies in Australia, 1960-61

Search for "Green and gold greats"

• Lillee vs Sobers, 1971-72

Search for "Lillee Sobers"

• Holding vs Boycott, 1980-81

Search for "Holding Boycott"

• India vs Australia, Melbourne, 1981-82

Search for "Aus Ind Melbourne 81"

• Arpan Bhattacharyya (Class of 2010) tells me Rahul Bhattacharya's piece is available on Cricinfo, too: "Video thrills the history fan". Thanks, Arpan.