What is it like to learn English as an adult in order to practise your profession of... novelist?

I did everything I could to avoid Dunglish, the unintentional but often funny mistakes Dutch speakers make in English. I had to stop myself from saying nonsensical things such as “let’s fall with the door into the house,” which is what we say in Dutch when we mean “skip the non-essentials.”

Trying to write in English was even worse. It required more than knowing the correct words to name things, the right prepositions, the difference between “come” and “get.” Writing is about sending a message, with all the nuance I intend. I wondered about tone and voice, the landscape upon which readers and I need to find common ground. I struggled to express myself in a way that would establish a shared intimacy with my readers. I felt vulnerable and worried about being misunderstood.

That is Pia de Jong, a Dutch novelist expressing herself admirably in what, to her, is a foreign language. De Jong, who now lives in America, wrote this heart-felt piece in The Washington Post a week ago, attracting a variety of comments. Here are just a couple:

CURMUDGEON: "Excellent. And today in the paper, we also have a story about an English teacher in DC Schools trying to teach the 'best and the brightest' how to write a five-sentence paragraph. Many don't know what a 'subject' and a 'verb' is. And this all in their native language, allegedly." 

SEMARI1: "What a wonderful piece. Thanks so much for it. I speak, in varying abilities, English (native), French, Italian, German, some Japanese, modern Greek, Hebrew... and I find I tend to have something of a different personality in each of them — as if the modalities and idiomatic aspects of them liberate, in each case, something new about myself that surprises me. Merely from reading your English it would appear your adopted language will certainly lead to continued marvellous results."

Read Pia de Jong's article in its entirety here: "A novelist learns to write".

And if you want an expert's views on what it means to write English as a second language, then check out "In one place, everything you need to know about writing in English".

• ADDITIONAL READING: "Want to learn how to write a sentence? (Who doesn’t?)"

Good news makes for plenty of views... and lots of positive reviews

There is no dearth of good news, really. Let me put it this way: How can there be a dearth of good news when there is no dearth of good people? People like the husband-wife team of Dhimant and Anuradha Parekh (pictured).

I learnt about the indefatigable Parekhs and their digital news website when I came across an article which they had written and which has been reproduced in the latest issue of Mint Lounge.

Anuradha and Dhimant, who live in Bangalore, are the founders and co-editors of The Better India, which, as they describe it, concentrates on positive news, happy stories, and unsung heroes.

Why did they set up The Better India? Dhimant explains:

It was a little over five years ago that my wife and I decided to start an alternative news medium. We were exasperated by reading the daily news in India that was largely negative and sensational in nature. It got us thinking: What should news do to you? Should it shake you up in horror? Should it leave you disgusted? Or should it also make you learn? Should it make you contribute? Should it enable you to bring about a change?

It was in an attempt to answer those questions that the couple decided to start their own news site, but "with a difference".

We decided to report only positive news. And by positive, we didn’t want it to be preachy or opinion-filled, we wanted to talk about ideas that have influenced communities, we wanted to showcase people who have brought about a change in their areas, we wanted to talk about the forgotten art forms of India, celebrate the successes of organisations that have improved the lives of many children —  the list continues to grow with every passing day.

It is fascinating to read how they went about popularising The Better India to the point where, five years on, they now have a 25-member team of writers and a fantastic archive of good news from all over the country.

Hats off to the Parekhs! May their tribe increase!

• Check out The Better India today here. And if you want positive news in your mailbox every day, sign up for the e-newsletter.

• Photograph of the Parekhs courtesy: Mint Lounge

Six simple equations that have the power to change your life

If A = 1, B = 2... and so on, then...

L + U + C + K = 12 + 21 + 3 + 11 = 47%

H + E + A + L + T + H = 8 + 5 + 1 + 12 + 20 + 8 = 54%

M + O + N + E + Y = 13 + 15 + 14 + 5 + 25 = 72%

K + N + O + W + L + E + D + G + E = 11 + 14 + 15 + 23 + 12 + 5 + 4 + 7 + 5 = 96%

H + A + R + D + W + O + R + K = 8 + 1 + 18 + 4 + 23 + 15 + 18 + 11 = 98%

A + T + T + I + T + U + D + E =

1 + 20 + 20 + 9 + 20 + 21 + 4 + 5 = 100%

• Also read: 

"You are your... attitude"

"Thou shalt follow these 10 commandments to be effective — and successful — at work"

"What's with the attitude, Gen-Y?"

A few inspirational quotes about journalism from a hugely inspiring book

“A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations. Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
— Thomas Jefferson, one of America's founding fathers

“Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you’re at it.”
— Horace Greeley, newspaper editor

“If you don’t have a sensation of apprehension when you set out to find a story and a swagger when you sit down to write it, you are in the wrong business.”
— A.M. Rosenthal, journalist

It is a newspaper’s duty to print the news and raise hell.”
— Wilbur F. Storey, newspaper owner

“I think perfect objectivity is an unrealistic goal; fairness, however, is not.
— Michael Pollan, journalist, author, and professor

“Bad news goes about in clogs, good news in stockinged feet.”
— Welsh proverb

“Journalism never admits that nothing much is happening.”
— Mason Cooley, professor

“The proper question isn’t what a journalist thinks is relevant but what his or her audience thinks is relevant.”
— Michael Kinsley, journalist and author

“Great questions make great reporting.”
— Diane Sawyer, journalist

“I really believe good journalism is good business.”
— Christiane Amanpour, journalist

• Who are Mike Wallace and Beth Knobel, the authors of Heat & Light? And what qualifications do they have to offer advice to the next generation of journalists? Everything will be clear after you read this touching obituary on Huffington Post: "My Colleague, Mike Wallace". Afterwards, read this tribute: "Mike Wallace: An interrogator of the famous and infamous".

MIKE WALLACE, LEGENDARY TELEVISION JOURNALIST

• In addition, you should check out the Heat & Light website, where you will not only get an explanation for the "heat" and "light" in the title, but, among other things, you will also be able to sort through a nifty "Journalists' Toolbox".

• Naturally you will want to own a copy of Heat & Light. It is available on Amazon.in as well as on Flipkart. (Commits students: A copy has been placed in the college library.)

• ALSO READ: Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez on why journalism is the best job in the world.

POSTSCRIPT
WHEN LIFE AS A JOURNALIST
GETS FRUSTRATING 

An excerpt from the final chapter of Heat & Light, titled "The Future: Advice for the Next Generation of Journalists":

It can get awfully frustrating at times in journalism. It can be hard to get yourself noticed, hard to get promoted, and hard to get good assignments. In a bad economy, it can even be hard to get a job.

We’ve both had times in our careers when we did a job we didn’t particularly like, or found it difficult to move up the career ladder. It took Mike several decades to go from being an announcer at a small radio station … to being a star on CBS.

In the end, you need to focus on building experience and expertise, and trust that the knowledge you’re acquiring will ultimately pay off in your career.

A fascinating two-man debate on the future of news

In the blue corner: Bill Keller (pictured below), a former executive editor of The New York Times who is now an Op-Ed columnist for the newspaper.

In the red corner: Glenn Greenwald, who broke what is probably the year’s biggest international news story, Edward Snowden’s revelations of the vast surveillance apparatus constructed by America's National Security Agency.

If you are a journalist, or you aspire to become one; if you are a media student; or, if you are just what is now known as a "consumer" of news, you will want to clue yourself in: "Is Glenn Greenwald the Future of News?"

• ADDITIONAL READING: "Editor Bill Keller on how The New York Times chooses Page 1 stories".

Here is "an oasis of learning about what you don’t yet know you’re looking for but are glad you found"

My favourite blogger, Maria Popova, popped over this morning in the form of her weekly e-mail newsletter and I learnt something new — again.

"Now I Know" was one of the treats Popova had lined up for me today. "'Lives are shaped by chance encounters and by discovering things that we don't know that we don't know,' a wise woman wrote; more than that, the discovery itself is one of life's great rewards and pleasures," Popova writes in the introduction to her post.

She continues:

Since 2010, Dan Lewis, director of new media communications at Sesame Workshop, has been hunting down and illuminating those infinitely fascinating unknown-unknowns and sharing them with the world via his delightful e-mail newsletter. Now, he has gathered the stories behind 100 of these curiosity-quenchers in Now I Know: The Revealing Stories Behind the World’s Most Interesting Facts — a mind-tickling encyclopaedia that does for little-known, unusual facts what The Secret Museum did for little-known, unusual artifacts.

Read the post in its entirety here. Then, as I did, head on over to the Now I Know website, check out the archives, and sign up for Dan Lewis's free daily newsletter. You'll learn something new every day, promises Lewis. And I believe him.

• ADDITIONAL READING: "Who can say no to Maria Popova's weekly interestingness digest?" 

"I am bored at work. What do I do?"

Increasingly I am being told by some of the young people I know that they find work a bore.

Let me rephrase that (because these young people are among the brightest I have met and because they have the potential to shine in their careers): Some of the young people I know are telling me that they are bored at work.

Which is a concern.

Because this means they most likely are performing tasks that have become routine, work has become mechanical, and the job is no longer as challenging as it used to be when they were first hired.

In short, they are bored. That is bad news for both employee and employer.

What to do?

I don't get bored easily. And I don't have a problem with self-motivation. I love what I do, so I get to do what I love. And I am grateful that life as a journalist, as a journalism teacher, has not only been full, but also fulfilling.

But I empathise with today's youngsters who are not able to motivate themselves to jump out of bed at the beginning of the week, thinking, "It's Monday! Woo-hoo!"

So, for their benefit, here are a few tips on how to relieve boredom at work.

1. From Forbes.com
Chrissy Scivicque, an award-winning freelance writer and professional speaker, writes:

Even if you love your job and you know it’s a good fit, there are some businesses/industries/positions that have natural cycles of activity. This means that there will be times when things are crazy busy and you’re totally engaged. And there will also be times when things slow down and you find yourself going kind of stir crazy. Here are some points to consider when those downtimes occur.

• Take Responsibility
• Keep a List
• Seek New Challenges
• Find a Friend
• Get Additional Training
• Examine the Cause

Scivicque elaborates on each of those points here: How to Handle and Relieve Boredom at Work

2. From Lifehacker.com
Whitson Gordon, editor in chief of Lifehacker, also has a "Top 10" list on the subject of boredom at work. While not all of his tips may be applicable to the Indian environment, he has some sound advice to offer when it comes to the relationship between exhaustion and boredom (No. 8) and on the issue of taking initiative (No. 6) as well as negotiating a change in your job description (No. 5).

Check out Gordon's list here: Top 10 Ways to Cure Your Boredom at Work

3. From workawesome.com
Productivity expert Mike Vardy writes:

Being bored with your work means you’ve got to change your work. It’s not the job you need to change, it’s the calling you need to change. Should you simply leave your workplace and do the same calling somewhere else, boredom is bound to creep back in. Now, if you’re content to stay in this job over the long haul, that’s fine… but you won’t find yourself doing awesome work over that haul.

Find out here how Vardy handled boredom at work: Make a Big Splash

And if one of the reasons for your being bored at work is that you have time to kill, think about signing up for a course at Coursera or Udacity. Both offer Moocs (massive online open courses), which are all the rage in the West as well as, now, in India. Read up about Moocs here: How would you like to take the world's best courses, online, for free?

• ADDITIONAL READING: How do you know you love your job? 

Running for a dream... and Dream A Dream

PAST FORWARD
Back in July 2010, on the "Dream Mentors" blog that I had begun for Dream A Dream, the NGO that works with and for underprivileged children, I had published a post about my involvement with this wonderful organisation based in Bangalore. Here is that post in its entirety:

A mentor, his mentee, and
the Sunfeast World Run

By Ramesh Prabhu

IN 2009, on May 31, I took part in the Bangalore Sunfeast World Run to help raise funds for Dream A Dream.

Thanks to generous donations from well-wishers, I was able to raise about Rs.50,000.

In 2010, on May 23, I took part again in the Sunfeast World Run with the Dream A Dream team (see "Majja Run 2010" below). And this time I raised about Rs.85,000 for Dream A Dream.

I had begun my association as a volunteer with Dream A Dream in August 2008. I began by teaching basic computer skills to underprivileged children on Sundays. Then, in February 2009, Dream A Dream asked me, and other volunteers, to join the mentoring training programme conducted by the husband-wife team, Dr. Dave Pearson and Dr. Fiona Kennedy. After the eight-week Sundays-only programme, I was "matched" with Kishore, a young boy from a shelter in J.P. Nagar named Vishwas.

Kishore had been enrolled in a home-schooling programme at the time. Subsequently he and other boys from Vishwas were admitted to a boarding school. But that did not work out and Kishore is now in a vocational training institute in Whitefield where he is learning a trade. He wants to be an automobile mechanic and he told me, when I last spoke with him, that he is happier now than when he was in a regular school.

In 2009, Kishore accompanied me twice to Commits, the media college where I am the professor of journalism — he met the dean and other faculty members and the students. It is my hope that these interactions will, in some small way, make him determined to do well in life. And, like other mentors, I used to take Kishore on outings, to the Forum Mall, to buy books, toys, etc. (You can view some photographs here.)

In May 2009, Kishore and I participated together in the Sunfeast World Run (see "Majja Run 2009" below). The two of us were able to bond memorably not only with each other but also with other mentors and mentees.

I am very grateful to Dream A Dream for having made it possible for me and many other volunteers to play a role in the lives of youngsters who have had a bleak past and who face an uncertain future. Here's a toast, then, to all the Dreamers!

MAJJA RUN 2009

MAJJA RUN 2010

POSTSCRIPT (October 26, 2013): I took part in the annual charity run twice more, in 2011 and again last year. Thanks to the generosity of my friends, colleagues, and relatives, I was able to raise almost Rs.4 lakh for Dream A Dream over four years.

MAJJA RUN 2011

MAJJA RUN 2012

• DREAM A DREAM, founded in 1999 and based in Bangalore, is a non-profit which seeks to empower young people from vulnerable backgrounds by developing life-skills and at the same time sensitising the community through active volunteering. On January 30, 2010, Dream A Dream and Vishal Talreja, co-founder and executive director, were featured in CNBC-TV18's weekly programme, "Young Turks". To watch the video, click here: Dream A Dream on CNBC-TV18.

• Want to volunteer with Dream A Dream? Click here.

Quotes from books, quotes by writers... to inspire, influence, and induce a new way of thinking-5

This was published in the October-November 2013 issue of Books & More magazine:

BOOKMARKS

Quotes from books, quotes by writers... to inspire, influence, and induce a new way of thinking/RESEARCHED AND COMPILED BY RAMESH PRABHU

"People tell me, Don't you care what they've done to your book? I tell them, they haven't done anything to my book. It's right there on the shelf. They paid me and that's the end of it."
— James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and other hard-boiled novels, on why he didn't bother to watch the films based on his books, in an interview with The Paris Review (from The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 1)

*

"Dear Marjane! Never invest in your looks! Invest in your brain."

— Graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis, recalling her mother's advice to her, in the introduction to The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009

*

"Why is it that people now spend less time preparing food from scratch and more time reading about cooking or watching cookery programmes on television?"

— The "cooking paradox", as outlined by Michael Pollan in Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, quoted in The Economist

*

"A family's photograph album is generally about the extended family — and, often, is all that remains of it."

— Susan Sontag in On Photography, which was first published in 1977

*

"I am fully aware that there are those who say the term 'empowerment' is outdated and overdone. I strongly disagree. The people who think it's overdone are those who possess the most power. Easy for them to say."

— Lois P. Frankel, in Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office: 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make that Sabotage Their Careers

*

"Lots of animals, particularly apes, use objects; but what sets us apart from them is that we make tools before we need them, and once we have used them we keep them to use again."

— Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, in his modern classic, A History of the World in 100 Objects

*

Once people start reading books on devices, they find that all the things that they worried about don't turn out to be true, and that they're actually perfectly comfortable with them."

— Publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin, in Vanity Fair's How A Book Is Born: The Making of The Art of Fielding, by Keith Gessen, which is available only as an e-book

*

"The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies."

— "Faber" to "Guy Montag", the fireman who burns books, in Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

*
“Any life devoted to reading is extraordinarily rich and rewarding, but it can certainly become an unbalanced life. Because of all the time I spend devoted to reading, here are some things that I've, perforce, given up: gardening, cooking, Rollerblading, and cleaning house. But in return I've gotten so much gratification from the life that reading has allowed me to live.”
— Nancy Pearl in the introduction to More Book Lust, the sequel to her massively popular Book Lust, which was first published in 2003

*

"People do awful things to each other. But it's worse in places where everybody is kept in the dark."
— "Veteran war photographer George Guthrie", in Night and Day, Tom Stoppard's 1978 play about foreign correspondents

• ALSO READ: Quotes from books, quotes by writers... to inspire, influence, and induce a new way of thinking-4

"NOBEL CALLING": Brilliant idea for a feature, brilliantly executed

In the week the Nobel Prizes are being announced, what kind of magazine article can you think of writing? After all, the awards are more than a hundred years old and everything that is there to say about the founder, Alfred Nobel, or his legacy in terms of the prize has been said already, probably many times over.

SEEING DOUBLE? THAT IS THE INTENTION.

So trust The Economist's cerebral quarterly, Intelligent Life, to come up with something exceptional. In the most recent issue, Tom Whipple finds out... wait for it... how the Nobel winners hear the good news.

There are three ways people receive the call. The most satisfying, for [Staffan] Normark [permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences], is when it is a total surprise. "Sometimes the person is completely silent. So totally that I don’t even know if they are still there. You can just hear him breathing." He notices his own use of the male pronoun. “It is still,” he says with a twinge of apology, "mainly men."

Sometimes the subjects of his research have an inkling that it could be their time; but when their phone rings, they try not to let themselves believe it. Serge Haroche (physics, 2012) was out walking with his wife when he saw a Swedish code appear on his mobile. "I realised it was real and it’s, you know, really overwhelming," he says. "I was lucky — I was in the street and passing near a bench, so I was able to sit down immediately."

And what is the third way? Find out for yourself by clicking on this link: "Nobel Calling" (that is such a brilliant headline too).

• By the way, since we're celebrating all things cerebral this week, read (also in Intelligent Life) this brief write-up on P.G. Wodehouse, that master of the English language, and his writing style: "P.G. WODEHOUSE'S ART OF THE COMMA".

• Illustration courtesy: Intelligent Life/Noma Bar

• ALSO READ: "Corporate role models: Mother Teresa and (gasp!) Lady Gaga" (More brilliant writing from The Economist)

What happened when "A Beautiful Mind"
got the call from the Nobel committee

Senior media professional PRATIBHA UMASHANKAR commented via e-mail:

Thanks, Ramesh, for sharing this with me.

For me, the most wonderful way a Nobel winner got the news was when John Forbes Nash, Jr (Economics, 1994) got the news. The distinguished mathematician had been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia for years and he would wander around the Princeton University campus like a lost soul. Little did he know that a paper he had written about Game Theory for an economics course he had taken when he was 18 or 20 years old would bring him worldwide renown.

His theory had had far-reaching impact in many fields, such as psychology, politics, marketing, and, of course, behavioural economics. In fact, many people had adapted his Game Theory in several disciplines, and most had thought the originator was dead.

John Nash, too, was dead to the world.

Then, one day, an old colleague accosted Nash, who was walking around in bedraggled clothes around the campus, sat him down on a bench, and told him, "John, you will receive a call from the Nobel committee, telling you that you have won the Nobel Prize for Economics."

And the call came, but the great mathematician, sadly, had no idea why he had won a prize for Economics.

Later, he had a miraculous recovery, after more than three decades of suffering, and he was able to go and receive the Nobel himself, and give an acceptance speech. Such is the stuff modern-day myths are made of!

Nash sold the rights of his story, and the film based on his life, A Beautiful Mind, was made, with Russell Crowe (pictured) playing Nash. The reason he sold the rights was so that his son, who too is schizophrenic, would be provided for.

And to end this on a "Nobel calling" note, this year's Literature winner, Alice Munro, received the news about her much-deserved prize through voice mail.