From the Bangalore newspaper I admire the most, an idea whose time has come?

The text of the announcement on DNA's front page, February 1:

"FROM TODAY, DNA DOES AWAY
WITH THE EDIT PAGE"

For years many of you have felt that the newspaper edit page has long outlived its usefulness. It's boring, very few read it, and it's a chore to fill. It's more punditry than expert comment. It's become a single-page editorial ghetto; and that makes little sense in this TV/mobile/web age where you're looking for more news validation and analysis.

Thus, DNA has decided to do away with its edit page.

This does not mean DNA will shun analysis: after all, it's part of our title. Instead, DNA will give you more comment, spread across the paper. For instance, today we have articles by experts on corruption and on the China-US presidential meeting. Each will appear on a different news page. Otherwise, they'd appear on two consecutive edit pages. DNA will give you more comment in the days to come; you've already seen it in the Money section, and you will even see it on the Sport pages. And it will all be interesting.

DNA is doing away with the "leaders", the 400-word unsigned editorials. Instead, as and when a news event warrants a stand by DNA, it will appear on page 1.

The letters to the Editor remain. They remain an important interactive forum and will now appear on page 2.

DNA believes the newspaper is a work in progress. Unless it evolves, it will become irrelevant. We are confident you will support our efforts at modernising journalism and staying ahead of the times.

— Aditya Sinha, Editor-in-Chief

***

Has DNA erred in scrapping what many purists might consider the hallmark, even the DNA, of every newspaper? Or is it a sign of the times? With many young people not even bothering to read newspapers, leave alone the Edit Page, doing away with the leader pieces, or editorials, and in-depth "thought articles" may be seen as one (desperate?) way to attract more readers.

To my mind, DNA's move reflects more a paucity of good writers in Indian journalism. Aditya Sinha confesses as much when he writes, "[The Edit Page is] boring, very few read it, and it's a chore to fill." There are very few journalists in India today who can engage, entertain, and enlighten readers in the manner of, say, the New York Times writers. Read the opinion columns by Bob Herbert, Maureen Dowd, Thomas Friedman, and Nicholas D. Kristof, to name just a few of the NYT's distinguished galaxy of writers, and you'll get an idea of what I am talking about.

That is my opinion, though. Sadly, not many people I know share that opinion.

Here are some comments sent to me via email and posted on Facebook in response to my FB status message on the subject:

BALA MURALI KRISHNA (Associate Editor, The New Indian Express): Would be curious to see what non-journos say or how many actually notice or comment on it.

ARCHITA SHASHIKANTH (Commits Class of 2011): I never read the editorial. I do always skim through the headlines and a para on the page but it has never really engaged me. I've read a whole article maybe once or twice. So this suits me just fine. On the other hand, the editorial is something that is always there, something you can just refer to when you need an informed opinion and haven't been following things properly yourself. It's a pity that won't be the case any longer.

SAMARPITA SAMADDAR (Commits Class of 2010):  It makes sense to me. It's better to have DNA's stand on page 1 than just one editorial column, isn't it? :)
(Samarpita Samaddar is the Public Relations Officer of the India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore.)

AYESHA TABASSUM (Commits Class of 2007): Depressing!
(Ayesha Tabassum is a writer with the Bangalore-based ad agency, Why Axis. She was in television news production in Mumbai for three years.)

FAYE D'SOUZA (Commits Class of 2004): I think it makes perfect sense. In fact, for those who have read the "Quick Edit" on Page 1 of Mint, I think that's a perfect way to voice a newspaper's editorial stand. I never read the main editorials on Mint's Edit Page. I read the "Quick Edit" and move on. :) With TV doing every piece of information to death, I think it is important for newspapers to give readers analysis. But I don’t have that kind of time or mind space in the morning any more. Keep it short, relevant to what I'm reading, and easily accessible — and it works.
(Faye D'Souza is the assistant editor of personal finance at ET Now in Mumbai. She also anchors the "Investors' Guide" show on the channel.) 

VARUN CHHABRIA (Commits Class of 2012): "DNA believes the newspaper is a work in progress. Unless it evolves, it will become irrelevant." How true. I think it's about time. I prefer opinions and in-depth analyses to be covered in weekly/monthly magazines. 

SUSHMITA CHATTERJEE (Commits Class of 2007): I think it isn't a very good idea because there are many I know (including me) who love reading the Edit Page for the kind of interesting analysis that's given. Now that it will be spread across all the pages, I don't know how great that would be!
(Sushmita Chatterjee is with Accenture Learning in Bangalore. She was a print and television news reporter for three years.)

DEBMALYA DUTTA (Commits Class of 2011): DNA is not such a well-known entity in Kolkata yet. Most of my seniors at The Statesman don't know about it. I discussed the issue with our deputy editor, Ishan Joshi. He made a relevant observation: "The edit page is for those who want something more than just facts, but do not have regular access to news magazines."

As for The Statesman, the editorial has been a defining factor for the newspaper since the days of the late CR Irani's column, "Caveat", which used to be published regularly as the anchor piece on the front page.

So, I think, as of now, Daily News and Analysis holds the monopoly for fiddling with the DNA of the broadsheet format. ;-P

(Debmalya Dutta is a sub-editor with The Statesman in Kolkata.)

SHAGORIKA EASWAR (Editor, Desi News and CanadaBound Immigrant, Toronto, Canada): I guess as people who run the business they know what they are doing, but the Edit Page is more that just a space in a newspaper that can be put to better use! It defines the paper and often contains some of the best writing in the paper. While the rest of the newspaper provides the news, this space gives you opinions, it is the personality of the paper. This just makes me sad. And as someone who reads DNA online everyday, [my husband and magazine publisher] Easwar, I'm sure, will agree. 

PATRICK MICHAEL (Executive Editor, Khaleej Times, Dubai): From this neck of the woods, I couldn't agree more.

The Op-Ed pages have become a think piece of one man/woman based on their perception of events in relation to their personal/country's stand. Does Henry Kissinger or Philip Knightley or Kuldip Nayar, Asif Zardari (yes, even he!) know any better than the educated man on the street who can decipher for himself what's going on? I think not. Do they shed any new light on events? Perhaps. But then don't all of them come with a bias? Kuldip was an editor and so was MJ Akbar. Indian editors often took sides, toed the management line when needed, heeded to the government in power because their masters wanted them to, ''spiked'' stories, lobbied, adopted a particular line of thinking, and seldom wavered from it and few, if any, saw a story right through its logical conclusion. Some did. I won't deny that and to them I raise my hat. Vinod Mehra is one of them, Busybee [Behram Contractor] another.

So what are they doing on the Op-Ed pages?

Good for DNA. Left to me, a full page of letters from readers makes more sense in this day and age of convergence journalism. Anything that actively encourages and engages people in debates is better than a Hillary Clinton column on MidEast affairs given the US somersaults depending on where their interests lie! (Egypt, for example.)

I was brought up on Op-Ed pages. It was my daily diet. But the years have taught me that one's man's view is another man's counter-view. I love reading the likes of Tom Friedman but not everyone is a Tom. You still have fuddy-duddies lecturing and looking down on youth with that ''I know better'' attitude.

Analysis — of any kind — should be on the news pages and should be current, not a week old!

EDIT PAGE, OP-ED:  RIP.

The masthead announcement on Page 1 of DNA, February 17. 

• UPDATE (May 1, 2013): DNA does a U-turn and brings back the Edit Page.

When "lobbying" becomes "fixing", it is no longer PR

NANDITA LAKSHMANAN, SUBROTO BAGCHI

So says Nandita Lakshmanan, founder of the Bangalore-based The PRactice, in an interview with Subroto Bagchi in Forbes India (February 11).

In the wake of the Niira Radia spectrum scam tapes controversy, Bagchi asks Lakshmanan, who has managed the Infosys account for ten years now, to tell him where the line must be drawn between PR and deal-fixing. The answer is enlightening:

When lobbying becomes ‘fixing’, it ceases to be in the domain of public relations. Many PR firms do cross the line; they hire former bureaucrats in the telecom or the retail sector — people who know the ‘right people’, who know how the ‘system’ works. PR can secure meetings with ministries, advise the client what to say, follow up, but there is a line. In India, as in many parts of the world, that fine line between influencing, advocacy and deal making is often trespassed.

Lakshmanan also explains why business must know about PR:

Every company should treat public relations seriously. A conscious corporation puts its reputation among its stakeholders above all else. It may not necessarily be the most visible in the media, nor [does] its recall need to be high in the larger community. Ironically, I have come across many successful companies, with greater market-share, stronger balance sheet than their competition, but they feel weak in public relations because their competitors are more visible in the media. Good PR need not mean constant, high visibility in the media.

And when Bagchi tells her that people think PR is all about managing the media, Lakshmanan's response will give all those thinking of a career in public relations an insight into that PR is really all about:

Media engagement is critical, but it is merely one aspect of PR and it must be used judiciously. PR can enhance your relationship with the financial community, help become a part of the local community, highlight issues to help change policy or behaviour. It can assist in managing and enhancing employee relations, pre-empting and preparing for crises and therefore mitigating their impact on your business.

PR cannot completely subvert a negative impact — if you’ve done something wrong, you have to suffer the consequences like in any relationship. And remember, a relationship is two-ways. You build it irrespective of whether times ahead are going to be good or bad. Sometimes, you need a relationship particularly when times are bad.

Read the interview in its entirety here: "The thin line in public relations".

• THE COMMITS CONNECTION: Nandita Lakshmanan has taught PR at Commits, and Commitscion Shane Jacob (Class of 2005) is a top executive with The PRactice. The agency has also taken many interns from Commits over the years.
• Photo courtesy: Forbes India

How the lack of a reading habit can be a serious handicap

I wonder if the lack of a reading habit also affects one's verbal skills. For instance, I know many young people who are not able to articulate their thoughts.

Is it because they don't do any reading?

When I ask them, for example, "So how was the movie?" They reply, "Good." If they thought it was really good, they reply, "Awesome." If they are feeling especially loquacious, they might say, "It was an amazing experience."

If I ask them why the movie was "good" or "awesome", or why they thought it was "an amazing experience", I rarely get one complete sentence out of them in response.

Still on the same subject, here's something that I hope young people will find inspirational:

Aakar Patel is a former editor of Mid Day. He is now the director of Hill Road Media, a syndication agency, in Mumbai. He is a top-notch writer and journalist whose columns in Mint Lounge are a delight to read ("Why our media can't explain India"; "Why is Plato known as Aflatoon in the subcontinent?").

In his latest column, published in Mint Lounge last Saturday, he discusses the importance of reading the Classics and gives examples in a matter-of-fact style, which, in this case, lends weight to his argument. And his argument is that the only proper education is a Classical one, and it comes out of reading the primary texts.

And he ends by writing, "If you seek it [a Classical education], no matter how old you are, I hasten you towards these magnificent works."

I hope young people reading this will take Aakar's proposition seriously. Even if they do not, there's something I think they should ponder. Here are the MOST IMPORTANT paragraphs (from young people's perspective) in Aakar's article:

I was driven to all these great works not early in life, for Gujaratis have no use for such education. When I dropped out of high school it was not a matter for concern or comment among my friends and relatives. I do not have a degree and there is not a single graduate in my family.

But I have tried to teach myself, and done so by replicating, however poorly, the method of the Orientalists.

What does this tell us? Aakar Patel became a GOOD journalist, despite not having a degree, because, among other things, he spent a lot of time reading.

Here's the link to his classic column: "An education in the Classics".

PS: What prompted this post was my Facebook status message yesterday (and the comments it attracted): I know some young people who don't like reading. Nor do they like writing. But they insist they want to join the media industry. A few of them even want to be journalists. What do I tell them?

ADDITIONAL READING:

1. If you want to be a versatile writer, here's some practical advice

2. "The five traits of a successful writer"

3. Here's how to make time to read 

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

5. In one quote, the essence of writing 

Localite vs local; upliftment vs uplift

Here's an email exchange that all Commitscions, for sure, and others interested in the usage of words will find illuminating:
 

from  Bonny Mathew
to Ramesh Prabhu
date Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 7:50 PM
subject The word "localite"

Sir,

I had a doubt with the word localite...I know you said that there is no such word as localite, but I happened to find this word being used at many places.

The oxford dictionary does not consist this word but there are other dictionaries that have it.

***

from Ramesh Prabhu

to Bonny Mathew

date Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 8:18 PM

subject Re: The word "localite"

You know what, Bonny? You're right — and you have caught me on the back foot here. :-)

You see, for me "local" says it all. So I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would add "-ite" to it.

Well, I am wrong. After I received your email I did a search and what do you know — there's a reference to "localite" on the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

I am stunned. Obviously.

But I see no need to use "localite" when "local" is good enough. So I am going to ban the use of "localite" in Your Opinion, our college newspaper, and in my assignments. :-)

(When you type "localite" in Gmail or in Word, you'll notice that red squiggly underline turning up as soon as you press the space bar. That tells you something, doesn't it?)

Anyway, you got me thinking, Bonny. I have another pet peeve: "upliftment". So I thought I should check out this one too. And, again, I was flabbergasted to learn that, according to some online dictionaries, it's a variant of "uplift".

Again, I see no need to use "upliftment" when "uplift" is good enough. So I am going to ban the use of "upliftment" in Your Opinion and in my assignments. :-)

(Also, when you type "upliftment" in Gmail or in Word, you'll notice that red squiggly underline turning up as soon as you press the space bar. That tells you something, doesn't it?)

Who's in charge of these so-called dictionaries, anyway? As far as I know, the dictionaries that are considered the final authority on the English language do not include these "variants". Some of you may argue that Merriam-Webster is a well-known name in the world of dictionaries, but, suddenly, I am not so sure about its status anymore.

No, no — I am kidding. Merriam-Webster has been owned by  Encyclopaedia Brittanica since 1964, so the editors know what they're doing. And, apparently, "localite" and "upliftment" do exist. So their usage will depend on house style. And that's final.

I am copying this to your classmates. All feedback is welcome.

Regards,

RP

***

AN UPDATE, JANUARY 29:

My 1,953-page Chambers Dictionary does not have either "localite" or "upliftment". Both "local" and "uplift" are given as the noun forms.

The New York Times, which I consider one of the world's great newspapers, does not use "localite" going by the search I performed this morning on its website (see below).

As for "upliftment", a search on the NYT website threw up three references. First, a direct quote with the word (in an obituary for a reggae singer who died last year):

In a 2001 interview, Mr. Isaacs reflected on his legacy. “Look at me as a man who performed works musically,” he said. “Who uplift people who need upliftment, mentally, physically, economically — all forms. Who told the people to live with love ’cause only love can conquer war, and to understand themselves so that they can understand others.”

Second, in an answer by a hip-hop musician, Jorge Pabon, to a question asked by readers in April last year:

The outcome of these efforts often brings about a strong conscious generation of individuals who have found peaceful ways to settle differences and who stand for the upliftment of their community.

This also appears to be a direct quote.

Third, in a reader's letter:

All these features make USA a dynamic and growing society like no other society in the world. Therefore, a mere statistical comparison with some of the so called banana republics is rather misleading, as these countries usually do not offer the same or even similar avenues and opportunities for individual growth and economic upliftment.

Any guesses where this reader hails from? New Delhi. Niranjan Raj sent in this letter to the NYT last November.

There seem to be no instances of NYT journalists using "upliftment" in their articles.

But search for "uplift" on the NYT website, and more than 8,000 results will turn up, including this sentence from an article in a November 2010 issue of The New York Times Magazine:

This fusion of confinement and uplift may seem like an empowering veneer on the reality of oppression.

To me, this is a good enough argument for banning the use of "upliftment" (and "localite") in our written and spoken English.

• UPDATE (June 28, 2012) — "Upliftment in The Times of India Crest Edition".

How many magazines in India will let reporters work on a story for six months?

I can't think of any. Except perhaps for Tehelka, whose editor Tarun Tejpal in 2007 asked his reporter Ashish Khetan to conduct a months-long undercover investigation into the Godhra killings. But among Indian publications Tehelka is unique, as we all know, and it is the exception to many rules.

In the West, on the other hand, many magazines specialise in long-form stories that can take the writers weeks, if not months, to put together.

The latest issue (February 7) of Fortune has one such article — an investigation into the BP oil rig accident in the Gulf of Mexico last April. The magazine's managing editor, Andy Serwer, writes in this issue that two reporters and a researcher "spent six months interviewing scores of interested parties and travelling across the U.S. and to London to interview, among others, three BP CEOs, current and former, including an unrepentant Tony Hayward and his predecessor, the architect of the modern BP, John Browne".

Serwer also explains why Fortune took up this mammoth investigation:

To do the biggest business stories right requires a significant investment of time and effort. It's an investment that frankly is becoming rare these days, but to me and the rest of us at Fortune it's a risk well worth taking if executed properly. The payoff — a long-form magazine story that provides understanding well beyond the daily ticktock — has almost unquantifiable value. As in, "Ah, I finally get what happened." How much is that worth?

And what do readers actually get? Back to Serwer:

The result is a rich, highly engaging tale told here in this issue — all 10,500-odd words of it — that gives a holistic picture of BP and what led up to the disaster in an analytical and cinematic fashion.

Six months. 10,500-odd words. Again my question: Which Indian magazine will permit its reporters to spend six months for a 10,500-word story?

• PS: The BP story is not up yet on the Fortune website because this issue is still on the stands. Check back later and read "BP: 'An accident waiting to happen'."
• Commitscion Noyon Jyoti Parasara (Class of 2007) has sent me the link to another fascinating example of long-form investigative journalism on the ProPublica website: "Pakistan and the Mumbai attacks: The untold story". (For the uninitiated, ProPublica is probably the most well-known media outlet for public interest journalism.)

How e-readers will make life easy for us readers

Sure, you can store a few thousand books in an e-reader but what will the "reading" experience be like? That is the question haunting book-lovers such as myself. And that is why I devoured every word of Altaf Tyrewala's article on his e-reading experience in a recent Tehelka.

In "My electric nights with Vikram Chandra", Tyrewala first takes us back to 2006 and the launch of Vikram Chandra's epic bestseller, Sacred Games. "At nearly a thousand pages," writes Tyrewala, "Chandra's was the fattest novel by an Indian-origin writer in recent years."

The book was a critical and commercial success, but Tyrewala says he persisted in his refusal to read the novel. He explains:

As a writer living and working in Mumbai, I’d established a rule: if a book couldn’t be carried into the city’s overcrowded suburban trains during rush hour, it did not merit my readership. It was a self-defeating middle-class snootiness, precluding my enjoyment of hundreds of masterpieces, but anyone who has endured the horror of those daily train rides will know that you cannot shrink yourself enough on a 6.08 pm Virar fast. A thousand-page book like Sacred Games belonged elsewhere, in a world of wide roads and spacious homes and peaceful rides in climate-controlled modes of public transport.

Later in the article, we learn about Tyrewala's e-reader:

I've been using one of these gizmos for a month, and can already see how it has begun renegotiating my assimilation of written material. This is the first month of my adult life that I haven’t purchased physical books. Where usually there would be a pile of volumes comprising my current (non)reading list strewn around the house, there now sits a single slim paperback-sized plastic device containing 10 downloaded e-books, and the capacity to hold hundreds more.

Tyrewala then discusses some of the problems with the technology:

Many of the books that I’ve been seeking to dive into for years aren’t available in the digital format as yet.... The e-book technology is still new and the reservoir awaiting digitisation is staggeringly vast. ... The search is no longer for books, but for digitally downloadable titles capable of being read on my e-reader. Given the limited choices, there is still joy in the hunt and relish in one’s find.

And he also looks into the crystal ball:

A more reliable understanding of e-reading habits and their effects will emerge a few months or years later. Can e-book stores remain immune to chain-store profusion? Will the e-reader surmount our growing inability to concentrate? It is inevitable that the ease of downloading titles will eventually devalue books, the way digitisation has made music and films pedestrian. ... There’s no telling how things might pan out in the long run. E-readers could prove critics wrong and not be the death of reading.

But Tyrewala is happy about one aspect:

For now, at any rate, the e-reader is accomplishing its task satisfactorily: it has got jaded writers like me reading again — and not just any old book, but the elephantine and intimidating Sacred Games.

Can there be a better argument in favour of e-readers?

Read Tyrewala's intelligent, witty, and visionary piece in its entirety here: "My electric nights with Vikram Chandra".

• Illustration courtesy: Tehelka/Sudeep Chaudhuri

• UPDATE (December 25, 2011): I bought a Kindle Fire last week. And now I think, for book-lovers, it's the best thing since sliced bread. Read my post here.

• UPDATE (October 10, 2013): I finally have my own e-version of Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games, bought on Amazon.in for Rs.99. :-)

Could a best-selling Finnish novel change your life?

Pico Iyer is one classy writer. A former Time journalist, he has numerous travel books to his name — Video Night in Kathmandu is probably the most popular in this part of the world.

Pico Iyer is also a renowned essayist. Mint Lounge last week devoted a whole page to his ruminations, reproduced from the Wall Street Journal, on a book by a Finnish author that extols the virtues of quitting the rat race and slipping away, at least for a while, from "everything that sounds so important".

Don't you love the way Iyer's opening lines seduce you into reading on?

Which of us has not entertained that deliciously seditious notion: to do a Gauguin? To slip away for a while from everything that sounds so important — a steady job, a settled home, a regular salary — and go off in search of adventure, restoration, fun? There is, after all, more and more to escape these days....

The book in question is The Year of the Hare, by Arto Paasilinna ("To me [at first] he simply looked like a name with too many vowels," writes Iyer.)

The plot of "The Year of the Hare" could not be simpler. A journalist, Vatanen, is sleepwalking through his everyday life, blind to the beauties of the wild, when a hare, "tipsy with summer," runs across the road in front of the car he is traveling in. In the wake of the resulting collision, Vatanen wanders off into the forest to care for the wounded creature. Soon he is drifting farther and farther away from what is commonly known as civilization, till finally he is living in a Nature Reserve in Lapland, north of the Arctic Circle. Free of the daily grind, he finds that his senses are newly sharp, his food has a taste it never had before and he is alive as he has never been in his regular life (besides which, his wife seems hardly to miss him).

After discussing the plot in some more detail, Iyer explains why this story resonated with him:

I, too, was working for a weekly magazine, once upon a time, sequestered in a small office in midtown Manhattan, and it was just a single autumn morning, on a layover in Tokyo, that acted on me like a fast-running hare: I was killing the hours before my flight back to New York by wandering through the little town of Narita, and something in the quiet stillness of the streets, the mildness of the late October light, told me of everything I was missing in my daily life at home. Why was I living according to someone else's idea of happiness, I thought, and not according to my own? I decided to move to Japan.

Many of us might have harboured similar thoughts — Why are we living according to someone else's idea of happiness and not according to our own? — but few of us set out to change the way we live and work. Perhaps Pico Iyer's concluding paragraph may prove to be the inspiration we need:

"The Year of the Hare" reminds us that what seems so important in our daily lives may not be all that permanent or sustaining. The best resolution to make this New Year's Day might be to open your eyes to everything around you — while also recalling that most of our lofty resolutions will ultimately come to naught.

Read the essay in full here: "The Road Into the Open".

• On the same page, Pico Iyer also provides a list of other books that can "set you free". Included among the five on the list are, unsurprisingly, Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, and surprise, surprise, Shakespeare's As You Like It.

• Illustration courtesy: The Wall Street Journal

Good writing does not come easy

No One Killed Jessica is the movie many people are talking about now and director Raj Kumar Gupta, who gave us the successful Aamir a few years ago, is the man basking in the limelight.

We know what NOKJ is about; what we don't know is how the movie came to be.

Now, thanks to an enlightening article by Rahul Bhatia in the latest Open (January 17), in which we first learn about the long discussions between the director and Sabrina Lall, Jessica's sister, we know what a struggle it was for Raj Kumar Gupta (pictured above) to put his script together:

After a month away from the story [after the meetings with Sabrina], Gupta sat down to write in his modest Versova [a Mumbai suburb] apartment. Looking at the material he had, he was frightened by its scope and scale. His last movie focused primarily on one character, while this one had several. “Then I thought, ‘If I do a bad job, no one will know about it because it won’t get made.’ But if I did a good job, this could be my best script. And if I could write this, I could write anything.” Before he began to write, he pulled down a poster of Aamir, and put it out of sight. (“You don’t want to think about what you did earlier.”)

After four starts, he found his pacing, tone and rhythm with his fifth attempt at the first scene. This is important, he says, because it gives him momentum when he launches himself into the foggy blank pages of a potential script. “I still didn’t have a story in mind.”

Still, he wrote. Words amounted to paragraphs. Paragraphs became pages. After writing ten pages, he decided he was going to make this movie. Propelled by the force of a steady beginning, he gradually had a story. And then it became a script.

But that's not the end. The shoot cannot start yet because Gupta is a perfectionist who believes everything begins with the script. So, over seven months, he writes 15 drafts. For all those who think good writing comes easy, the next paragraph is instructive: 

“Writing is a very painful process,” he says. “Very tiresome. Very lonely. I have no one to guide me. So it takes me time to figure things out.” To move on with an incomplete script, or even one that’s less than perfect, is unthinkable.

It isn’t just about the story in itself. The story is what will wake him up in excitement for months during gruelling schedules. The story is what will keep him strong when it’s  cloudy on an outdoor shoot. The story, essentially, is where hope lives.

“I think what’s important is that the script is the inspiration,” says Gupta. “Whatever I make, the story should be inspiring enough for me to keep going. And as a director, you know, there are 200 people working towards one person’s vision. Out of them, 70 per cent will be doing a job. There’s no art to it. But the other 30 per cent are creatively adding to the product, whether it’s the director of photography, or assistant directors who are highly neglected and underestimated. But everything begins with the script.”

If you're interested in film-making or scriptwriting, or if you simply want to understand the creative process, read "His Own Way" for a fascinating insight into the mind of an unassuming-looking young man of whom we're sure to hear a lot in the future.

• Photo courtesy: Open

Still on scriptwriting, the same issue of Open coincidentally features film critic Anupama Chopra's fervent plea to Bollywood to put an end to plagiarism and generate some original scripts. She writes:

In the last decade, the Hindi film industry has gone from strength to strength. Profits have boomed; viewers have  multiplied; Brand Bollywood has amplified. Hindi cinema is everywhere — from the Sundance film festival to theatres in Poland and Germany.  However, despite the success, the rising global profile and the  increasing chances of getting caught, Bollywood filmmakers continue to  happily plagiarise. So Aakrosh is Mississippi Burning, Knock Out is Phone Booth, Guzaarish has shades of The Sea Inside and Tees Maar Khan is After the Fox, which is written by Neil Simon.

Read the column in its entirety here: "Original Scripts, Please?"

PS: One of the sub-headings in this piece reads "Less stars, more script". It should read "Few (or "Fewer") stars, less script". Know why?

• Back to NOKJ. If you've watched the movie, you will know that Tehelka is only acknowledged in the end-credits as an afterthought. Well, the country's No. 1 (only?) public interest magazine had a big role to play in getting the case heard again, as Nisha Susan explains in the January 22 issue: "The film attributes the Tehelka investigation that convicted Manu Sharma to an imaginary television journalist," writes Susan. "Cinema, of course, has its own imperatives but before history is entirely rewritten Tehelka would like to take a moment to remember its three-month long undercover investigation without which Jessica Lall’s murderer may still be free." Read the article in its entirety here: "The investigation we did. And the movie they made".

(8) Facebook rants to make you think about bad English vs good English (31-35)

Ramesh Prabhu 

Rant No. 31: Why don't we know how to distinguish a declarative sentence from an interrogative one? DNA published a story today with this headline: "Why keeping New Year resolutions is difficult?" That question mark at the end reduced the headline to "babu" English and ruined the story for me. 

January 5 at 3:25pm

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  Sujith Mohan, Tania Sarkar, Ayushman Baruah and 3 others like this.
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    Tania Sarkar sir, could you please elaborate on this? i didn't quite get it! :(
    

    January 5 at 8:47pm 
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    Asif Ullah Khan ramesh, my son arsalan says there is no such thing as two persons. it is either one person or two people. can you help me
    

    
    

    January 5 at 8:48pm 
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    Aravind Baliga Ramesh, good one. Without the question mark at the end, it would be a statement, hopefully followed up by the article explaining exactly why this is difficult. On the other hand, the header "Why IS keeping New Year resolutions difficult? " (note uppercase IS) would be grammatically correct as well, followed by an article explaining why its difficult.
    

    January 6 at 6:52am

     
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    Ramesh Prabhu Tania: Read Aravind's comment. Got it now? Let me know.
    

    January 6 at 10:48am

    
    
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    Tania Sarkar Thanks, sir... got it now... :)
    

    January 6 at 10:51am

    
    
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    Ramesh Prabhu Asif: It is correct, but perhaps rare, to write "two persons". Ask Arsalan to just Google the phrase "two persons" -- there are plenty of entries. (Though I must add that there are one or two websites that say "two persons" is wrong.) Read the second para here: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/him.html.
    

    January 6 at 2:19pm

    
    
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    Menka Sony Thanks a ton

    January 6 at 3:52pm

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    Ramesh Prabhu 

    Rant No. 32: A "dais" is a raised platform, as at the front of a room, for a lectern, throne, seats of honour, etc. Why do so many of us say or write "dias" when we mean "dais"?

    January 6 at 1:39pm
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    Vibha Ghai Another prospective rant ... if you have not listed it already ... why 'momento' instead of 'memento' ? The Italian connection somewhere? :-)
    

    January 6 at 1:48pm

     
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    Sudhir Prabhu Blame all the Dias' from Mangalore such as Priscilla Dias and Edwin Dias :)
    

    January 6 at 2:31pm

     
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    Tania Sarkar this one we did in class, sir! :) thanks... i miss your phrase of the day! :( couldn't it be on fb?
    

    January 7 at 1:18pm
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    Ramesh Prabhu 

    Rant No. 33: Why is it necessary to use the word "dusty" to describe libraries or encyclopaedias?

    Unacceptable: "Wikipedia [has] replaced libraries stocked with heavy, dusty encyclopaedias." -- Mint, Dec. 31, 2010
    
    For one, it is a cliché. Second, I have never seen a dusty library or encyclopaedia. Have you?

    January 7 at 3:43pm
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    Sumana Krishnan, Bala Murali Krishna and 2 others like this.
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    Padmini Nandy Mazumder Uh... Yes I have! The District Library at Guwahati is full of dust! :P
    

    January 7 at 3:51pm

    
    
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    Padmini Nandy Mazumder And full of dusty volumes of encyclopaedias!
    

    January 7 at 3:52pm

    
    
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    Ramesh Prabhu Clearly, I have to go to Guwahati and give the librarian a piece of my mind.
    

    January 7 at 3:55pm

    
    
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    Tania Sarkar well, sir... but so have I! :(
    

    January 7 at 4:13pm

     
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    Debmalya Pablo Dutta Me too... The famous National Library in Calcutta... The old periodicals department... Besides having the choicest collection of magazines and dailies,it has some of the oldest dust in the country... :P
    

    January 7 at 6:54pm

     
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    Tania Sarkar i belong to the same place!
    

    January 7 at 7:27pm

     
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    Ramesh Prabhu Calcutta, Guwahati: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust?
    

    January 8 at 10:49am

    
    
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    Debmalya Pablo Dutta Ha ha ha ha ha...
    

    January 8 at 10:50am

    
    
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    Ramesh Prabhu Do our other cities have dusty libraries and encyclopaedias? I haven't seen any in Mumbai or Bangalore.
    

    January 8 at 10:50am
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    Saffana Michael I dont know about libraries but my bookshelf at home often collects dust.... maybe books just naturally collect dust?
    

    Sunday at 9:02am

    
    
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    Patrick Michael

    You have dust mites, dust storms, dusty roads and dusty libraries. Try the public library in Panjim, or the Asiatic, or the the one that used to be opposite the Jehangir Art Gallery in amchi Mumbai. If you sneezed, you'd trigger a dust storm! Sorry Ramesh, guess you've not been to places I have!!!!

    
    

    Sunday at 7:00pm

    
    
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    Ramesh Prabhu

    Pat: The situations you describe may have existed 20-30 years ago. Do you think the scene will be different today? Also, these libraries are all public libraries -- does anyone still visit public libraries? I am curious.
    
    I am a member of the Just Books chain of libraries -- the branch I visit is air-conditioned; I use radio frequency ID, or RFID, technology to return and issue books at a touch-screen kiosk, and I have access to some 4,000 new books every month. I just can't imagine "dusty" being used to describe any Just Books branch or the books on their shelves.

    
    

    Monday at 10:22am
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    Ramesh Prabhu

    Rant No. 34: India Today (Jan. 10) has no problems with the F-word, spelling it out in full in one article. But in another piece in the same issue it uses asterisks to camouflage a Hindi obscenity (ch*****). What gives?

    Monday at 11:09am

    
    

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      Aniket Basu and Suraj Patel like this.
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        Bala Murali Krishna Here is one from Business Standard's Page one: "When contacted Bonanza Director Bonanza did not take the call."
        

        Monday at 3:31pm

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    Ramesh Prabhu

    Rant No. 35: What is this "ya" one finds so often in Facebook status updates? Here's one: "He's a friend ya...." And here's another: "i ll come tomo ya... m ok hw u?" I understand all the shorthand used on FB but for "ya". Is it supposed to be "yeah"? Or "yaar"? Or is it just another crutch word like "basically"?

    Yesterday at 10:48am 
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    Shweta Rajan, Sujith Mohan, Varun Chhabria and 7 others like this.
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    Sudhir Prabhu ya i 2 need 2 know
    

    Yesterday at 10:52am

     
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    Samarpita Samaddar I use it as a shorthand of "yaar" :)
    

    Yesterday at 10:52am

     
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    Kirti Bhotika Garg it's a shorthand for "yaar" Sir... :D lol, I could imagine you speaking out your rant :P
    

    Yesterday at 10:54am

    
    
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    Sharon George mostly short for yaar i imagine
    

    Yesterday at 10:57am

     
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    Nandini Hegde sirji txt language ko baksh do!! nahi to Rant No. 555 tak pohach jaaoge! :P
    

    Yesterday at 11:05am 
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    Vibha Ghai I think once you reach 100, it will be time to look for a publisher ... The Rants You Always Wanted To Air But Could Not !
    

    Yesterday at 11:09am

    
    
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    Tania Sarkar sir, although I never use it... but normally people use it as a short form of "yaar"... and this is not just a form of shorthand but they also use it in spoken language too!
    

    Yesterday at 11:24am

    
    
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    Ramesh Prabhu Tania: In spoken language, it's ALWAYS "yaar", isn't it?
    

    Yesterday at 11:30am

     
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    Ramesh Prabhu Nandini: My "Bambaiya" Hindi vocabulary does not include the word "baksh". Please translate your comment for me. :-)
    

    Yesterday at 11:46am 
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    Preeti Suman hmmm...point to be noted My Lord !!
    

    Yesterday at 12:02pm
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    Koyel Mitra HE HE.. SIR, IT'S JST TYM FR U TO GET USED TO OUR TEXT LANGUAGE..
    

    Yesterday at 12:10pm

     
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    Tania Sarkar Sir, that's what I said... that in spoken language too people have started using this word! :(
    

    Yesterday at 1:03pm
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    Ramesh Prabhu Koyel and other young people: You will notice that in the examples quoted in my status message there's an ellipsis after each "ya". That's three presses of a key, right? Why not press "a" and "r" instead and complete the word in the same amount of time taken to key in the ellipsis? (Assuming that "ya" stands for "yaar", of course.)
    

    Yesterday at 2:13pm

     
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    Nandini Hegde sir ji baksh do means spare it!
    

    Yesterday at 3:12pm

     
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    Ramesh Prabhu Ah, I get it now. No, Nandu, I am not going to be taking on our texters but I was really curious abut this "ya" business. I have my answer now. Thanks.
    

    Yesterday at 3:26pm

    
    
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    Harshada Neem i salute thee for all the rants u can think of !!!!! sirjee tussi great ho !!!
    

    20 hours ago

    
    
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    Mini Kolluri

    Growing up in Bangalore, it was a part of the slang. Almost like "da" in Tamil or "o" in Kannada. Not sure what the origins are, but "ya" would translate to "man". So, "What ya?" or "Tell me ya". "Ya" by the way is gender neutral.
    
    Before you get mad at me, I haven't used it since childhood when we'd jokingly use "poriki" English.

    
    

    16 hours ago