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Sunday, December 29, 2013

You have heard about the Curse of the Mummy. Now read about the Curse of the "Mummyji"

Trust the Economist to provide the most intelligent and fact-filled yet engagingly written feature I have ever read on India's vexed saas-bahu relationship.


The headline is perfect: "Curse of the mummyji".

The intro is brilliant:

TIHAR jail in Delhi has a special wing just for her. Young women fear and revere her; their husbands seem crushed by her embrace. On television she is a sari-clad battle-axe. Books about her offer advice including: “Run, she is trying to kill you.”

The direct quotes are kept to a minimum, both in number and in length (unlike the long and often pointless quotes we skip in most Indian publications). Here's a sample:

An elderly woman in north India, laughing ruefully, recalls how, after her rural wedding, it took “three days to work out which man in the new family was my husband”.

By tradition, a wife accepted her saas’s tyranny. The life of Renubala, now an elderly woman, is typical. Married at “12 or 13”, she moved in with her husband’s farming family in Tripura, in north-east India. For three years she shared a bed not with him but with his widowed mother. “I was very scared of my mother-in-law, even when she was nice,” she remembers. “I would call her ‘ma-goshai’ [Godmother].”

Mrs Venugopal sees sex and shame behind such obsessive control. Mothers-in-law, she says, “don’t trust [daughters-in-law] to be faithful”, so they try to desexualise them, locking them up, fattening them up, phoning several times a day.

The transitions are smooth, which is the hallmark of good writing and, also, the hallmark of Economist writing. There's an easy flow to the whole three-page feature, and in no time at all, before you even realise it, you arrive at the concluding paragraph, which you have to admire for its ingenuity because it says so much about the saas-bahu relationship without saying too much.

Read the article in its entirety here to soak up the brilliance and to learn a few things, as I did, about Indian mothers-in-law.

PS: You will be shocked to read what happened to Renubala, the mother-in-law worshipper.
  • Photograph courtesy: The Economist
MORE FROM THE ECONOMIST:

One of the most courageous young women I know. Certainly, the most courageous young mother I know.

Why I am proud of Commitscion ANN THOMAS (Class of 2005):


Friday, December 20, 2013

Goodreads tells me I have read 107 books so far this year. Only 107?

My Year in Books! What I Read in 2013
www.goodreads.com
Ramesh Prabhu read 107 books in 2013. See the full list on Goodreads, the world's largest site for readers and book recommendations!
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      Monday, December 9, 2013

      What is "tabloid journalism"?

      Here, in the form of an article in Mint, is a fine explanation of tabloid journalism by Aakar Patel, a senior journalist whose writings I admire and who uses the Tarun Tejpal story to make his point:

      At one end of the news spectrum is the report on one individual and one incident. The more famous the person is, the smaller the incident required to qualify it as news (Sachin Tendulkar retires, Shah Rukh Khan and Gauri have a surrogate baby, Tejpal accused of rape). These stories are usually of no concern to the reader and do not affect the world at large.
       


      However, this is a legitimate space for reportage, and media that focuses purely on this sort of journalism on one person and one event is what is called “tabloid”.
       

      There is a class bias here. Such news is aimed at and consumed by the lower classes, who are not very educated and interested in popular rather than high culture. It is the blue-collar masses who subscribe to tabloids such as The Sun in London, which are the best exponents of such journalism.

      What lies at the other end of the (media) spectrum? Read on: "When every newspaper becomes a tabloid".
      • To know more about Aakar Patel, go here.

      Font memories

      Blogger gives me a choice of seven fonts:
      • Arial
      • Courier
      • Georgia
      • Helvetica
      • Times
      • Trebuchet 
      • Verdana
      I don't care for either Arial or Courier, the former because it is ubiquitous and the latter because it looks ugly. Our college newspaper, The Chronicle, uses Georgia; Helvetica and Times, like Arial, are commonplace, while Verdana leaves me cold.

      Which leaves me with Trebuchet, the font that, as it turns out, is perfect for blogging. Here's why:

      This "humanist sans serif typeface" was designed by Vincent Connare, according to a note on Wikipedia, "for the Microsoft Corporation in 1996. It is named after the trebuchet, a medieval siege engine. The name was inspired by a puzzle question that Connare heard at Microsoft headquarters: 'Can you make a trebuchet that could launch a person from main campus to the new consumer campus about a mile away? Mathematically, is it possible and how?' Connare 'thought that would be a great name for a font that launches words across the Internet'."

      Isn't that a great story?

      STEVE JOBS KNEW HIS FONTS.

      To move on: I may be a huge fan of Trebuchet, but I learnt recently after reading an article in Bloomberg Businessweek that there are "Helvetica men", too, and Richard Turley is one of them. In his piece about Apple iOS 7's "design problem", Turley spends a lot of time discussing the font chosen by Apple while explaining why Tim Cook & Co. should have used a particular variant of Helvetica.

      If I have a single criticism of Apple’s font, it’s that the designers didn’t go back to the source. The desire for the purity of essence and obsessive detail on which Apple prides itself should have led the company to Christian Schwartz’s recut of Helvetica... Schwartz went back to the original forms of Max Miedinger’s Neue Haas Grotesk, before it evolved through various compromises and mutated into Helvetica. That’s even before you get to Neue Helvetica, a further mutation, which Apple is using here. More weights, more rational, more square, designed by committee, and even less like the original. So. You make a big play of spending every waking hour committed to perfection, Apple? Not in my book.

      Read the piece in its entirety here: "Apple iOS 7's Biggest Design Problem".
      • There is also a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design, and global visual culture. Titled (what else?) Helvetica, it "looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which celebrated its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives". To learn more, go to "Helvetica: A Documentary Film by Gary Hustwit".
      UPDATE (January 10, 2014): Searching for something about the origins of the ampersand, I discovered this very interesting page on typography on the Adobe website. And that's how I learnt that the symbol & is derived from the ligature of ET or et, which is the Latin word for "and". Learn more about the ampersand here and then go on to the Type Topics page.

      Thursday, November 7, 2013

      What we can and should learn from the scientist who coined the term "continuous partial attention"

      We may think that kids have a natural fascination with phones. Really, children have a fascination with whatever Mom and Dad find fascinating. If they are fascinated by the flowers coming up in the yard, that’s what the children are going to find fascinating. And if Mom and Dad can’t put down the device with the screen, the child is going to think, That’s where it’s all at, that’s where I need to be! 

      I interviewed kids between the ages of 7 and 12 about this. They said things like “My mom should make eye contact with me when she talks to me” and “I used to watch TV with my dad, but now he has his iPad, and I watch by myself.”

      Kids learn empathy in part through eye contact and gaze. If kids are learning empathy through eye contact, and our eye contact is with devices, they will miss out on empathy.

      Wise words indeed from LINDA STONE, who worked on emerging technologies at Apple and then Microsoft Research in the 1980s and ’90s. Stone was being interviewed by James Fallows for The Atlantic magazine. Read the full text of the interview here: "The Art of Staying Focused in a Distracting World".

      Wednesday, November 6, 2013

      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".

      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

      Tuesday, November 5, 2013

      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
      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.)
      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.