Archived Authors on Web 2.0

by

Chris Henderson

Aldous Huxley: Brave New World:

Aldous Huxley wrote The Brave New World in 1932 and looked back at it in his essay The Brave New World Revisited in 1958. Those years are way back in the realms of the prehistoric if one considers the instant by instant history that defines Web 2.0.
Even the futuristic devices in his tale fortelling the future remain quaintly analogue. Well, he was after all not a science fiction writer but social commentator who set this tale in the days to come.

In the 1932 classic, which has visions of a consumerist and robotic society, he comes closer to the world of today than many would give him credit for, in spite of the absence of the digital.

While in no way is this article suggesting that he foretold the world to be with stunning accuracy, there are certain approximations which, nonetheless, are striking.

The entire premise of the Brave New World, a futuristic world in which human beings go through their lives in a celebration of youth, entertainment and hedonistic sexual gratification, hinges on an enormous initiative of manufactured consent. Brainwashed from birth and across generations, they have come to accept the consumerist culture as an axiomatic truth while questions raised about this way of life is not only discouraged, but also considered freakishly antisocial.

However, the most interesting feature that strikes me is the concept of hypnopaedia. Consumerist and other acceptable dictums repeated over and over from infancy, for years while the individual sleeps, ultimately results in a human being who is one of his group, a team player, someone who knows what is the accepted right and wrong. In other words, a  model citizen leading a model life.

While the trailing paedia in the coinage points to delicious parallels in the connected world, it is the concept of numbing the idle brain with a series of external agents that seems to be more than prophetic, especially so in the world of Hollywood, You Tube, Corporations and Uncle Sam.

Some of the slogans that are used in the hypnopaedic treatment almost echo the current world.

“Stability, Identity, Community.”

“Old clothes are beastly. We always throw away old.”

“I do love flying, I do love flying.”

“Hug me till you drug me.”

“A gram (of hallucinogen) is better than a damn.”

An idle consumerist society, tuned in to entertainment readily available, addicted to sexual gratification, the common thrills of intoxicants, consumption and the ersatz, simulated adventure of travel.

iPod plugged to the the ears, surfing on the hand held smart phone, videos of Shakira and Lady Gaga on YouTube, a backpacking visit to Europe, and the hallucinogen of FaceBook.

You look at the Russian youth or the connected American junkie. It is a stable world with unique identity fostered by a socially networked community  – where human values and reading Shakespeare are indeed seen as the traits of a Savage. As was depicted in the masterwork by Huxley.

Stability, Identity, Community

Kurt Vonnegut : Cat’s Cradle

In Cat’s Cradle Kurt Vonnegut speaks, among other things, of Bokononism - a religion based on foma or harmless untruths, written in the form of calypsos.

While Bokononism is full of its own tantalisingly funny terminology, which may give one a vin-dit (a sudden shove towards Bokononism) or help one understand the connected world (busy busy busy busy - words Bokononists whisper upon witnessing an example of how interconnected everything is), the one word which gives a stunning description of current online activism and cause connected communities is granfalloon.

A granfalloon, defined by the Bonkomist lexicon, is a false karass.

A karass is a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God's will.

A granfalloon, in contrast to a karass, is another group of people who outwardly choose or claim to have a shared purpose or identity, but whose mutual associations are meaningless.

Some of the examples that Vonnegut provides in his masterpiece are – the Communist Party, the Daughters of American Revolution, the General Electric Company or any nation anytime anywhere.

The last example is further stressed in the following passage - they had found a can of white paint, and on the front doors of the cab Frank had painted white stars, and on the roof he had painted the letters of a granfalloon: U.S.A.

To define a granfallon, Bokonon, the founder of Bokononism, uses the calypso “If you wish to study a granfalloon, just remove the skin of a toy balloon.”

One wonders what Bokonon or Vonnegut would have written or sung about the Web 2.0 slacktivists, whose idea of being connected to a cause is a series of  forwards, likes and retweets, with smileys, on issues of supposed unifying social issue. “Walk like an Egyptian :-)”, 13 Likes
Busy Busy Busy Busy has changed to Like Like Like Like

In Bokonomist terms, this is inviting pool-pah.

William Styron: Sophie’s Choice

Sophie Zawitowska, the Polish survivor of Auschwitz, overhears a group of young American students talking of their travails with psychoanalysis and their therapists.

It is 1947, the embers of the recent mindless mayhem still glow hot, sparks visible every time one ventures a tentative glance over the shoulder a wee bit back in time. The period is also one of growing fascination with psychoanalysis.

Sophie speaks to the narrator, twenty two year old Stingo , summing up the superficial sadness of the smug students while lolling on the Coney Island beach. In doing so she uses a wonderful expression, so  appropriate even sixty four years later in analysing of the legions of online FaceBook slacktivists.

“Unearned Unhappiness,” she says.

And through the magic of Styron’s storytelling, we are convinced that she knows what she is talking about. 

*

Chris Henderson is a fictitious character who appears in Arunabha Sengupta's The Best Seller.  He is an aspiring author and lives in Pasadena, California

Archived Authors on Web 2.0

by

Chris Henderson

Aldous Huxley: Brave New World:

Aldous Huxley wrote The Brave New World in 1932 and looked back at it in his essay The Brave New World Revisited in 1958. Those years are way back in the realms of the prehistoric if one considers the instant by instant history that defines Web 2.0.
Even the futuristic devices in his tale fortelling the future remain quaintly analogue. Well, he was after all not a science fiction writer but social commentator who set this tale in the days to come.

In the 1932 classic, which has visions of a consumerist and robotic society, he comes closer to the world of today than many would give him credit for, in spite of the absence of the digital.

While in no way is this article suggesting that he foretold the world to be with stunning accuracy, there are certain approximations which, nonetheless, are striking.

The entire premise of the Brave New World, a futuristic world in which human beings go through their lives in a celebration of youth, entertainment and hedonistic sexual gratification, hinges on an enormous initiative of manufactured consent. Brainwashed from birth and across generations, they have come to accept the consumerist culture as an axiomatic truth while questions raised about this way of life is not only discouraged, but also considered freakishly antisocial.

However, the most interesting feature that strikes me is the concept of hypnopaedia. Consumerist and other acceptable dictums repeated over and over from infancy, for years while the individual sleeps, ultimately results in a human being who is one of his group, a team player, someone who knows what is the accepted right and wrong. In other words, a  model citizen leading a model life.

While the trailing paedia in the coinage points to delicious parallels in the connected world, it is the concept of numbing the idle brain with a series of external agents that seems to be more than prophetic, especially so in the world of Hollywood, You Tube, Corporations and Uncle Sam.

Some of the slogans that are used in the hypnopaedic treatment almost echo the current world.

“Stability, Identity, Community.”

“Old clothes are beastly. We always throw away old.”

“I do love flying, I do love flying.”

“Hug me till you drug me.”

“A gram (of hallucinogen) is better than a damn.”

An idle consumerist society, tuned in to entertainment readily available, addicted to sexual gratification, the common thrills of intoxicants, consumption and the ersatz, simulated adventure of travel.

iPod plugged to the the ears, surfing on the hand held smart phone, videos of Shakira and Lady Gaga on YouTube, a backpacking visit to Europe, and the hallucinogen of FaceBook.

You look at the Russian youth or the connected American junkie. It is a stable world with unique identity fostered by a socially networked community  – where human values and reading Shakespeare are indeed seen as the traits of a Savage. As was depicted in the masterwork by Huxley.

Stability, Identity, Community

Kurt Vonnegut : Cat’s Cradle

In Cat’s Cradle Kurt Vonnegut speaks, among other things, of Bokononism - a religion based on foma or harmless untruths, written in the form of calypsos.

While Bokononism is full of its own tantalisingly funny terminology, which may give one a vin-dit (a sudden shove towards Bokononism) or help one understand the connected world (busy busy busy busy - words Bokononists whisper upon witnessing an example of how interconnected everything is), the one word which gives a stunning description of current online activism and cause connected communities is granfalloon.

A granfalloon, defined by the Bonkomist lexicon, is a false karass.

A karass is a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God's will.

A granfalloon, in contrast to a karass, is another group of people who outwardly choose or claim to have a shared purpose or identity, but whose mutual associations are meaningless.

Some of the examples that Vonnegut provides in his masterpiece are – the Communist Party, the Daughters of American Revolution, the General Electric Company or any nation anytime anywhere.

The last example is further stressed in the following passage - they had found a can of white paint, and on the front doors of the cab Frank had painted white stars, and on the roof he had painted the letters of a granfalloon: U.S.A.

To define a granfallon, Bokonon, the founder of Bokononism, uses the calypso “If you wish to study a granfalloon, just remove the skin of a toy balloon.”

One wonders what Bokonon or Vonnegut would have written or sung about the Web 2.0 slacktivists, whose idea of being connected to a cause is a series of  forwards, likes and retweets, with smileys, on issues of supposed unifying social issue. “Walk like an Egyptian :-)”, 13 Likes
Busy Busy Busy Busy has changed to Like Like Like Like

In Bokonomist terms, this is inviting pool-pah.

William Styron: Sophie’s Choice

Sophie Zawitowska, the Polish survivor of Auschwitz, overhears a group of young American students talking of their travails with psychoanalysis and their therapists.

It is 1947, the embers of the recent mindless mayhem still glow hot, sparks visible every time one ventures a tentative glance over the shoulder a wee bit back in time. The period is also one of growing fascination with psychoanalysis.

Sophie speaks to the narrator, twenty two year old Stingo , summing up the superficial sadness of the smug students while lolling on the Coney Island beach. In doing so she uses a wonderful expression, so  appropriate even sixty four years later in analysing of the legions of online FaceBook slacktivists.

“Unearned Unhappiness,” she says.

And through the magic of Styron’s storytelling, we are convinced that she knows what she is talking about. 

*

Chris Henderson is a fictitious character who appears in Arunabha Sengupta's The Best Seller.  He is an aspiring author and lives in Pasadena, California

Kiosk - The Book Shop

	The Best Seller by Arunabha Sengupta Sengupta has developed a finely tempered blade of a book which takes artful slices at several pretentious elements of modern life. Rated 5 stars by ForeWord Clarion Book Reviews The story of a struggling author who lands up in Amsterdam, hunting for an agent or publisher to at least take a look at his manuscripts. As he prepares his synopses, SASE and sets of first three chapters, he works as a Ghost Blogger, tai chi instructor, an investigative journalist specialising in sting operations, and finally a messiah for the financial crisis by packaging together ancient Indian philosophy and the raunchier Woody Allen films.  A roller coaster ride from psychoanalytic sessions in the sin city's Red Light District to author evenings in Pasadena, California - it is a unique journey.  Among Amazon’s top selling books in select categories
	Roman Lipi by K. Kasturi Are you planning a visit to India as a tourist? Do you know that there are eleven major languages spoken there, each within a well defined geographical area ? Are you a member of the Indian diaspora in the West? Most probably your son and daughter might have lost touch with the language you left behind in India. You are eager for them to keep in touch but where is the help?  The answer to the above mentioned problems is this book The author has devised a unique Romanized script common to all the major Indian languages. With the help of this e-book you can manage to express yourself in a rudimentary way in any Indian language
	Big Apple 2 Bites: a novel of Love, 9/11 and Aikido  – Arunabha Sengupta "The novel is racy and the language is simple. The writer brings to the reader the scents and smells of America. The writer's exuberant prose regarding Aikido made me think of learning it too." ~ The Sunday Tribune. "The novelist deals with great sensitivity with the issues of 9/11, the loss of jobs ... disillusion with the corporate environment. There is a lot of enjoyable humour. The entire book is written in the second person, adding a touch of freshness to the narrative." ~ The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. "The only English novel from India to deal with the 9/11." ~ Geetha-Ganpathi Dore in Post Colonial Indian Novel in English The novel deals with topics of weight and importance with an irreverence that is almost mocking, while dissecting the society and laying it bare, tipping more than its share of sacred cows ...
	Perfectly Untraditional - Sweta Vikram Srivastava Perfectly Untraditional unravels unconventional and untold tales of families, friendships, love, loyalty, relationships, and tradition." A powerful, riveting, perfectly unique exploration of the tangle of relationships that is the modern Indian family.”
	Conflict and Other Stories – Shubham Gupta These short stories are a meticulous reflection on life and a subtle expression of the intricacies that it presents every moment with resounding ease and regularity. The effervescent style and the unexpected twists are what the author calls 'blinds,’ which extract new meanings from what we generally miss out in keeping with our hectic chores. They delve in love, relationships,  plain-storytelling, and in life, a life in which not everything is good, not everything bad. Plainly put, a life that just goes on and on..

Featured Release: Perfectly Untraditional by Sweta Srivastava Vikram

"New York City-based writer, Shaili Kapoor, is shocked to find out about her mother, Meena Kapoor’s death. 
Meena had drowned herself in Pashan Lake in Shaili’s hometown Pune, in India. When she was younger, Shaili and her mother would often spend time at the lake, without the knowledge of her father, Suresh Kapoor and younger sister, Tanisha. Shaili is devastated; apart from her childhood friend Supriya, her mother was the only connection she had with India or her past over the past fifteen years. Even as a young adult, Shaili had estranged relations with her old-fashioned, alcoholic father, but when he found out about Shaili’s divorce and about the new love in her life, he was livid. Both he and Tanisha ostracized her. But Shaili was always astonished at how accepting her mother was of her decision.

Between the time Shaili finds out about her mother’s death and reaches India for the last rites, she discovers a deep secret about the mother she worshipped and the father she grew up to loathe. Nothing is as it seems. Shaili knows the time has come for her to make peace with her father. Will Shaili find peace in knowing the mystique behind every occurence associated with Pashan Lake and the reason for her mother’s suicide? More importantly, will Shaili and her father ever accept each other’s personal choices? Perfectly Untraditional unravels unconventional and untold tales of families, friendships, love, loyalty, relationships, and tradition."

"A powerful, riveting, perfectly unique exploration of the tangle of relationships that is the modern Indian family.”

-Swati Kaushal, bestselling author of Piece of Cake and A Girl Like Me

 

Availability online:

To purchase the book in INDIA: http://www.flipkart.com/b/books/perfectly-untraditional-sweta-srivastava-vikram-book-8189738860

 

To purchase the book outside India: http://bookvistas.com/bookdetails.aspx?bookId=16153

To purchase the book outside India via Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=perfectly+untraditional&x=0&y=0

Sweta Srivastava Vikram (http://www.swetavikram.com/) is a two times Pushcart nominated-poet, novelist, author, essayist, columnist, educator, and blogger whose musings have translated into four chapbooks of poetry, two collaborative collections of poetry, a fiction novel, and a nonfiction book of prose and poems (upcoming in 2012). Her scribbles have also appeared in several anthologies, literary journals, and online publications across six countries in three continents. Taj Mahal Review describes Sweta as "A poet with hauntingly beautiful talent." A graduate of Columbia University, she lives and writes in New York City and reads her work across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Sweta also teaches creative writing workshops.
Follow her: On Twitter (@ssvik) or Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/Words.By.Sweta)

Common Indian Script

by

Chiranthan

It was the spring of 2006 and I was headed to China on my first work assignment outside Indian shores.

The excitement of travelling to a foreign country for the first time, the prospect of meeting and living among a different race of people and the eager anticipation of what lay ahead kept my spirits higher than ever before. But soon enough all my enthusiasm came crashing down, faster than the Boeing 767 jet in which I landed in the country. As I sat down at a restaurant in the Shanghai airport, the waitress (for the record - stunningly beautiful) brought me a menu card consisting of nothing but indecipherable little boxes and lines stroked all over, vaguely reminiscent of the outer cover of the "Dragon Noodles" packet I used to lovingly buy when I was back home. But this menu card didn’t evoke any of that fond nostalgia. Rather, it brought forth a gut wrenching feeling of isolation and vulnerability.

The waitress promptly returned to take my order and it is at that point that I realized for the first time how helpless I would be for the next few months. Try as I might, I was unable to communicate my need for a warm meal to her. Neither was she able to make me understand her lack of incentive in comprehending what was not an official language of the most populous nation in the world. Well, she had a point and I had to sheepishly settle for a glass of diet coke by pointing out to the logo of one of the most popular products of western commercialization that had permeated even through the Iron curtain. In the days that followed, I slowly recovered from the trauma of my high voltage cultural shock as I began rediscovering my abilities in miming and marveling at the technological wonder that Google translator had turned out to be.

When I look back at those days, I take comfort in noting that I am not the only one to have faced the trauma of a language radically different to what one is used to. I also reflect that one can be faced with this problem much closer to home than I had initially imagined. My work required me to frequent Bengaluru (I prefer Bangalore) which is in a neighboring state and just a few hours’ drive from my home. What I realized was that, a task as simple as taking the public transport to work became impossible simply because all signboards of the KSRTC public buses were written in the Kannada script. Merely looking at the squiggles and twirls of the bus-stop names was enough to send me dizzying into the trap of auto-rickshaw drivers ripping off what was easily more than half my daily allowance. It is not that the public transport system was in anyway inadequate or incapable of meeting basic needs, but my perception was tainted by the problem of not being user-friendly to ones not able to read the language. It is needless to say what horrors a foreign tourist would experience even in a modern and cosmopolitan city of India. Incredible India! Indeed.

Not restricted to public transport, other government offices and some private establishments also stick to their native script alone in all their communication and documentation and it becomes extremely difficult for non-natives to engage in basic transactions even if they do have the ability to speak the language haltingly. Think about the diversity and complexity of the country and one can figure how chaotic it would be for Indians to carry out unrestricted trade and social activities across the length and breadth of their own country. There are over 20 official languages spoken across states and union territories and among these, the written forms of these languages are vastly different from each other except for a few commonalities. Imagine the gargantuan task faced by a traveler trying to freely transact with people even from a neighboring state, or to simply move around the country without being flummoxed by sign boards.

The idea of multi-lingual communities living together under a common nationality is not unheard of but the sheer scale of such differences is rather unique to India and is unprecedented in any other society. A tri-lingual country such as Switzerland has managed the problem of multiple languages very well by having all signboards and public information displayed in all three languages with the dominant font designated to the chief language of the particular region. It is however much simpler, given all three languages share a common script. Compare this to the Indian scenario where you would end up having meter long sign boards to simply point out in 20 different languages and scripts where one can (or more importantly in case of India where one should not) relieve themselves. The cost that the government can incur to install digital LED signboards in railway stations that are capable of displaying multiple scripts will stop the project before initiation.

The solution of course does not lie in forcing a common language on the people, because language has its origin from the culture of a community and the two are closely interrelated. There are certain aspects of a culture that would be lost if translated into another language, thereby undermining India's pride of being tolerant and standing united in the face of diversity, allowing all cultures to flourish simultaneously. Profanity, among other more important features, can be best expressed only in one's own native language in order to have the best results. Thus the problem should be looked at more from a practical angle. Of being able to overcome the challenges posed by the differences in scripts, while still allowing languages to retain their individuality. Such a solution would primarily rely on identifying the common script connecting all these languages so that their vocabulary can be maintained unaltered.

According to K.Kasturi, an octogenarian and retired station director of the All India Radio, such a solution does exist.

In his long tenure with the All India Radio, he had worked in different locations across India. In his interactions with people from different states he has identified this problem of having so many different scripts to deal with even for simple inter-office communication and the difficulties that this poses. He suggests that when a student learns a language, the first step is usually to learn and memorize the written script. A large portion of the student's effort is directed towards this, often acting as a deterrent to people wanting to learn other languages for basic communication such as finding one's way around or buying groceries in the market. Not many have the time or patience to invest in learning an entirely new language from scratch just to satisfy a short term goal of visiting the region for carrying out business or leisure activity.

The answer, according to Kasturi, lies in the fact that among all the Indian languages there are some basic phonetics that are common and only a few that are unique to a particular language. He has scientifically studied these language sounds and has identified 58 basic phonetics, which when put together as a script, can seamlessly form the unifying platform that can be the basis for easily learning and communicating in any Indian language with only a little effort. He has based this scripting system on the widely used Latin alphabet with a very few additions for some phonetics that are unique to certain Indian languages. This ensures that even a foreigner can easily, with the help of a Latin-script based dictionary, be able to read signs and find his or her way around in this culturally diverse country that has so much to offer to the curious traveler or the enterprising businessman.

With the advent of the internet, the world has become more closely connected and information on practically anything is available at the click of a button. The idea of a common Latin script based alphabet for Indian languages opens up a wide array of possibilities. We can think of having much of traditional Indian knowledge freely available on the Internet, with minimum effort in customizing hardware or software for Indian scripts. This would be a boon to efforts of unrestricted commercial, cultural and social exchanges across the people of India and the rest of the world.

In his website  Kasturi describes the work he has done in deriving this common script in detail and even provides a model lesson for using the script with one of the Indian languages as example. Readers can also download the font face for free which is fully compatible with Unicode character sets and the standard US keyboard. This means that if the common script is universally adopted, it is already computer friendly and that no additional effort or cost is required for customizing existing infrastructure.

He has also published a handy-guide typically meant for an English savvy tourist to use this unified script to easily read and make basic conversations in any of the major Indian languages.

This handy ebook guide can be purchased at the following online book store - http://www.abook2read.com/authors/k-kasturi/roman-lipi-guide-book-and-conversation-in-indian-languages.html.
He hopes to popularize the adoption of the common written script and believes that when his idea gets widely adopted and gains acceptance among Indians as well as those abroad, it will bring about much benefit to the country in several ways. He can be contacted at his email address kkasturi24@gmail.com.

I definitely look forward to a day when one can travel to any part of the country and find his or her way around with ease not worrying about having trouble interacting with people of different states; when reading the menu at a restaurant would be as simple as keying into a palm-sized English keyboard based translator that will tell you exactly what is in store for you. Kasturi’s methodology for unifying Indian languages under a common script definitely seems to make these highly plausible and signals a new chapter in emerging India. One that is more united than ever before in spite of its diversities.

*

Chiranthan is a talented photographer who has contributed his work to Scroll in earlier issues. He supposedly lives in Zurich, but if one looks away for a moment, he can be lost in any part of the Schengen zone.

The Unending Pie

The Unending Pie

(A tribute to Anant Pai)

Shub Atpug

 

I always wanted to meet Uncle Pai.

He was the Unending  Pie .

In the impressible minds of fertile aptitude, ‘Endless Pie’ reigned supreme - a pie of every child’s fantasy and imagination, that speck in a child’s mind, whose work of sheer creativity on traditional folk-tales and mythologies amalgamated with real life, like conjoined Siamese twins. Millions of children were fed on the charm of his characters in the comics, with a distinct moral take-away to top it with a beauty. Generations of youngsters have been stirred

in their souls, making fruitful forays into what great lives of history are meant and reflected in the perceptive minds of current times. I could wish I was as wise as Birbal, as magnanimous as Akbar the Great, as sagely as Agastya, as naïve as Suppandi. The demons were black and the Devas were handsome. O what miracle was Ghatothkach’s leaping out of the flames! Raja Harishchandra’s story instilled in children the virtues of truthfulness, even as Shivaji rendered them wings to conquer, the touchy scruples of Panchatantra which would have a
weighty message woven the most simple way in that a 6 year old could easily comprehend. There would be Kalia the crow, the wisdom of Hiuen Tsang, a Greek tale of valour here and an Arabian tale of humour there. The caricatures were lively and lovely, and appeared to speak through, with the eyes of a famished teenager gobbling up text, wanting more. Their parents, in their thirties or forties, would check out their kids once in a while – to see what’s it that they have been reading since long (surprised by the pin-drop silence), and sure enough, the parents would themselves get engrossed and captivated along with their young offsprings, as they sit down to read along! 

The 1^st Annual Indian Comic Con was held on the 19^th-20^th February, 2011 at the venue Dilli Haat, New Delhi, which was a conclave for comic book creators, animators and publishers.  The lifetime achievement award was to be given to Anant Pai.  However, he could not attend as he had a foot fracture, resulting in a surgery. His award was received by his longtime editor Reena, on his behalf. On 24^th February, 2011, just a few days later, Anant Pai succumbed to a heart attack, in a Mumbai hospital at the age of 81 years. While living, he was endless, a legend. Death was meant for him, as if to ratify his claims to immortality, which he so deserved, just like his comics.

My first interaction with him was in the year 1988, when I was a fifth-grader. I had written a story for ‘Tinkle’, a children’s digest produced by Uncle Pai. In those days, you had to make submissions through the post mailbox, and if your manuscript made though the grind and came out good, you would be notified by a return postal mail. My story about a king and a witty commoner was selected by Uncle Pai, and the amount awarded was rupees twenty. With that award money that time, I bought myself a cool-drinks (quite rare at that time) and a few more Amar Chitra Katha titles. Uncle Pai sent me a hand-written letter, with an
autographed picture of his. It had words of encouragement to ensure I keep writing. Tinkle was a monthly magazine that time, costing rupees four. Those were the God-sent words for me as a child, when the mind was young, the pen a fickle instrument for adventure, the amorphous ideas nascent and volatile. 

Anant Pai was born in 1929, in a place called Karkala in Karnataka, whence he lost his parents at the age of two. At the age of twelve years, he came to Mumbai, and studied the science subjects, getting dual degrees from the University of Mumbai. His first attempt to create a children’s magazine (Manav, 1954) failed and hence was followed by a career as a junior executive in the Times of India books division.

It so happened that Anant Pai was watching a TV program aired on Doordarshan in 1967, in which he noticed the participants could easily answer questions pertaining to Greek mythology, but failed answering as to who was Rama’s mother in the Indian epic mythology ‘Ramayana’! He left his job and started the Amar Chitra Katha the same year, with the help of G.L Mirchandani of India Book House. It was started as an educational comics series. He had approached other publishers too, but they had rejected his idea. The giant publishers that time, like Allied Publishers and Jaico had taken no interest. Anant Pai went all by himself to don the role of writer, editor and publisher all in one. A couple of years later, in 1969, he founded the Rang Rekha Features, the first comic and cartoon syndicate in India, and started the children’s magazine in 1980. He did not know at that time that Amar Chitra Katha would sell three million comic books a year, in English and more than 20 Indian languages. In the early days of the comic, Anant Pai would himself stand at the petrol pump kiosks to vend
his titles. 

Well, to put the statistics in perspective, here’s a comic series that has already sold about a hundred million copies since its inception!

The first title, Krishna, was published in 1970, but the idea didn't take off immediately. The publishers lost over Rs 50,000 in the first two years. "For three years he worked without getting a single paisa, but Anant was patient and didn't want to shut down his business. And from the fourth year, we flourished. Money was not very important for Anant. He was happy and satisfied with people learning our culture," said Lalitha, his wife, in an interview to a leading newspaper recently.

“Story-time with Uncle Pai” was a series of audio book versions of Amar Chitra Katha, where
he would be the narrator-storyteller. His voice was one of a grand-dad telling bedtime stories to the kids and teenagers of the present generation. No wonder Anant Pai has been acclaimed as the ‘Uncle’ with whom an entire generation of comic book lovers have been in love with and been brought upon. He had a role to play when Times of India came out with Indrajaal Comics in the 1960s. He carried over his learning and experience to the door-steps of his own venture.

Anant Pai’s expertise helped to conceptualize most of the mythologies for Amar Chitra Katha, with the art-work being done by his coterie of faithful art-designers like Ram Weerkar, Dilip Kadam, Pratap Mullick, Souren Roy, Jeffrey Fowler, Madhu Powle and Chandrakant D. Rane. What clicked for this entire group on, and glued them together till date, is a matter of conjecture. Also, its interesting there have been no court-cases or law-suits filed against the stories (or Anant Pai) on the ways they have been depicted – knowing mythologies are subservient to the malady of variable interpretations. We have a fair idea how the mob gets swayed by the depictions they construe as incorrect or blasphemous – and how pelting stones at the creators’ houses, burning effigies, hurting the family members and disrupting business becomes the order of the day. All this fanatic allurements have origin in a greater or lesser degree of a political clout meant to target a distinctive religious sect for the purpose of votes. In a country where educationists fight over the profiles of freedom-fighters and their place in history books, it is indeed surprising how Amar Chitra Katha could manage a smooth-sail without a ripple of a roar.

The punch in the lines, the scripts, the illustrations were all a labour of love – those times when there was no google or Wikipedia to get ready-made hard-boiled eggs without boiling, when each story or fable had to be
meticulously worked for and worked upon,  researched, and when his team-members had day-jobs as ad agency illustrators to take care of! 

I do not think Anant Pai ever saw himself as a nation-building educationist who can bring about a change. Rather, I would use the word ‘educator’ for him, one who invented comics as a medium to delve into the past without the ordeal of getting bored, and for which reason generations of readers have become his fans. Myths and mythologies would be mined from the bottomless Oceans of the scriptures, plots would be sincere with a pint of contemporary overtures, and all loose ends of the characters’ voices would be tied up eventually as the story progressed. Remember, Anant Pai took up this immense task of his own volition, where a man sets his own target in life! It were those ages when comics was seen as a shitty sediment of the un-intellectual milieu, meant for shallow stories taking up refuge in the dungeons of idiotic narratives, and which invariably had parents barking at their kids to castigate and trash ‘those comic books’ if they ever wanted to do anything in life! 

Amar Chitra Katha and Tinkle changed it all. Now there were parents who would promise their children titles of the comics if they stood first in class or got a 100 percent marks in their Mathematics examination. A sea change! As much for the charm, as for the languor. The Anu’s Club section in the monthly magazine ‘Tinkle’ was the story of a group of children hanging out with Uncle Anu — a character based on Pai himself — learning about science
in a fun manner. Well, again, Mirabai sang not for herself, but for Lord Krishna. A man is born with a purpose in life. Some people do certain things because they were born to do certain things that way and die one day, immortalizing themselves and their work. While alive, and in death, they live beyond time. Anant Pie was one such.

While Anant Pai was trained to be a chemical engineer, he spent only three months working as one — "one month plus two months' notice". Now here’s an anecdote to savour. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a statesman and a poet himself, and an Indian (and world) leader of stature, once remarked how the appeal of Anant Pai was comparable to Chacha Nehru (Jawaharlal Nehru).
Obviously, it might have implied the appeal with regards to children. But an entire Nation knows today, it was much more than that! It has shaped up and molded the minds of youngsters who are the citizens and leaders of tomorrow. It is also said that Mikhail Gorbhachev, another world-statesman and leader once called him up on the phone to understand better the meaning of a quote in Sanskrit. His marriage with his wife was a love-marriage. They had met in the Hindi class in her school at Dadar and Anant wanted her to meet his parents. As Lalitha said in an interview to a leading newspaper: “But I was only
15 then and told him to wait or else my parents would ask me to sit at home and not let me complete my education. I was a school-going girl whereas he was a college boy. Both of us lived in Wadala and we walked down to the school together. I asked him to meet me after five years for marriage. He was determined and came back after five years and asked me, 'Do you remember me?' I too liked him and my parents granted me permission to marry Anant.” 

It is quite strange that the Uncle of the millions of children across generations should not have a kid of his own. That too, knowing the decision was one that was consciously taken. "He was very busy with work all his life. To bring out one comic, he would read hundreds of books for research so that there was no error. Sometimes, I do feel that we should have had our own children, I do miss it... but it's okay, I have been very busy along with him. We were
invited by a lot of parents all the time, people were extremely fond of him” said his wife Lalitha at a recent interview.

Anant Pai has edited some 439 titles of Amar Chitra Katha alone and fed generations of Indians who now know the innumerable famous and obscure characters of Indian mythology. You flip through and browse an Amar Chitra Katha or a Tinkle comics at the Comics section of the bookstore on a Sunday post-siesta afternoon, there’s a one-in-a-zillion odds for you to quit reading the comics midway. I bet you would read it till the end, on your knees!  

No drab sessions in Indian history and mythology this, its Uncle Pai.

One who would write a postcard back to each child who wrote to
him!

Unending Pie, The.

Myths and Legends of Indian English Fiction

Shruti Rattan

An emerging Indian writer who writes in English relates this story with great relish. Closing his eyes, leaning back, he begins: "Six years back, I was sitting in my drawing room in Salt Lake Kolkata. Copies of my newly published novel stood in precariously balanced stacks all over the limited floor-space. In front of me sat my extremely helpful elderly neighbour, looking politely impressed, but with pointed reservations.

Shruti Rattan is a fictitious character who appears in Arunabha Sengupta’s latest novel The Best Seller. An Amsterdam based researcher on political science, she is also a talented author and compulsive punster.

“He was a decent, diligent writer of fiction and plays in Bengali and had been a disciple of Buddhadev Guha, one of the vocal traditionalists who had waged a full throttled war against Indian writers writing in English.

          “ ‘You write excellent English,’ my good neighbour said generously, ‘But, I have got to tell you something. You have to start writing in Bengali too...’

“ ‘Well ...’ 

“ ‘Don’t worry, literary sense comes from within. The language is just your vehicle. But, unless you write in your mother tongue, you will always be limited. You won’t be able to capture the nuances.’

“Being close to thirty years younger than him, I did not really want to get into a debate. I had diagnosed this to be one of those topics where conviction towers over senses while the gentle breeze of arguments only heat up the environment without bothering the rational acumen. Globalisation, Global Warming, Social Networking, Scientific rigour of
Economics, the advantage of using MBAs, American Foreign Policy and the merits of Sourav Ganguly’s batsmanship are but a few examples of this genre of debate.

“However, I did mumble the names of Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov. Predictably, this did not make much of an impact, since he had not heard of either.    “I had to make do somehow with a focused discussion on the mango of the season and its exponentially increasing price.”

The arguments of the venerable gentleman are valid to some extent, if one deals with the age old depiction of rural India, the interactions of the village folk and the daily lives of the
erstwhile middle class man still not convinced about battling the bureaucracy to obtain a useless document called the passport. At the same time, R.K.Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and the rest of the old brigade have done a wonderful job of telling the tale of the common Indian man in the adapted language. The late Professor P.Lal, with his one man enterprise The Writers Workshop, did show that English could be the means of narrating Indian lives as
well as rediscovering the wealth of traditional wisdom.

On the other hand, when the setting changes to the modern world of corporate environment, repeated ventures abroad, a cast of characters from all over India and the whole wide world, writing in the vernacular can be a handicapped handful. Whereas the open world makes us take the tone of irony inherent in the English language more and more, it is
the depiction of the novel nuances of the modern day cubicular world that can take a severe beating if attempted in the native languages. 

Versatility of an author and his finesse with words can always achieve the telling of a tale, but modern day writers generally find it easier to speak about the global landscape in the global language than the local one.

In two excellent articles in journals published in France and India, eminent literary reviewer Dr. Shyamala A. Narayan of the Jamia Milia Islamia University, New Delhi, voices the same thoughts.

“Literary production in all the genres of Indian English literature has gone up significantly in the last two decades.  The debate about the legitimacy of Indians writing in English, because it is a foreign language (it was “unpatriotic”) died out by the 1970s.
The condemnation of Indian English writing returned in the nineteen-nineties, now in the guise of “Nativism”, the argument that true literature has to be born of the local milieu. Nativist critics like Bhalchandra Nemade have pointed out the intimate link between culture and language. It follows axiomatically, they believe, that Indian English writing has no locus standi, because the English language did not take birth in India. But creative writers, publishers and the reading public are undeterred by such considerations, and Indian English writing, including drama, flourishes as never before.  Girish Karnad, the eminent playwright, makes Manjula, the protagonist of his monologue  “Broken Images” (2005)  discuss this issue: 

A pundit for instance has stated that no Indian writer
can express himself – or herself – honestly in English. “For Indian writers,
English is a medium of dishonesty.” Of course, one could also ask how many
Kannada writers are honest in what they write in Kannada. But if you did that
you would be immediately condemned as a traitor.  (Karnad  192)”

 (Shyamala A. Narayan, Recent Trends in Indian English Literature, Commonwealth Essays and Studies  ed. Marta Dvorak, Paris, Vol 31.2

Spring 2009 pp.5-14)

The definitive differentiator which leads more and more Indian authors to take up
the pen in English is that life has changed. The texture of the world and lives undergoing a paradigm shift with the coming of the computer age and the internet, social networking and so on, the social issues have also metamorphosed into their new mutated forms. As Narayan says: 

“The novel is concerned primarily with social issues. Indian English novelists, including the “Big Three” (Anand, Narayan and Raja Rao) and Khushwant Singh, Manohar Malgonkar, Kamala Markandaya, Nayantara Sahgal, Arun Joshi and Chaman Nahal wrote about the society of their time — common concerns included the village, Indian conditions
like arranged marriages, caste and untouchability, plantation labour and the class struggle. They presented the India of holy men (Narayan’s The Guide, Bhabani Bhattacharya’s He Who Rides a Tiger) and Maharajas (Manohar Malgonkar’s The Princes is the best example). Or they present East-West encounter in various modes – the philosophical in Raja Rao’s The Serpent and the Rope, the comic in Anurag Mathur’s The Inscrutable Americans. Young novelists of the twenty-first century depict a very different kind of society, they describe the section of society they know at first hand.  They write about  life
in the IITs and IIMs, the experiences of  young MBAs when they start working, software professionals, call centres, matrimonial websites and twenty-twenty cricket.”

(Ibid)

     While it is difficult to detail the conversation of the village panchayat, or the intricacies of a mid day card game between idle housewives of the suburban India, in English, when describing the life of a computer programmer, an MBA or a software process consultant, the language is blessed with an already rich vocabulary which eliminates the need of laborious reengineering in local languages. Especially Indian languages are restricted in this regard because the adequate knowledge of English in the native speakers ensured that a technical
– and by extension a social – vocabulary for these professions did not need to be reconstructed in the mother tongue.

     Hence, Shyamala A. Narayan does not find it difficult to read and enjoy the
offerings in English with their modern day subject matter. 

Three novels about software professionals stand out: Arunabha Sengupta’s Labyrinth (2004) and Big Apple Two Bites (2007), and Priyo Ghosh’s You are Fired (2005).

 Shankar Roy, the protagonist of  You are Fired,  has a degree in information technology, and lives and works in Singapore. When his company is unable to land a lucrative contract because of a rival firm’s chicanery, he is fired. We are shown the
sudden change in their lifestyle; he and his wife Anu have to move out of their big house into a poorer neighbourhood.  Roy starts questioning the values of corporate life; instead of looking for another job, he steps in to help his neighbour, a Chinese widow whose store is running at a loss. He uses his knowledge of  software and information technology to build it up into a thriving business.

 Labyrinth shows two brilliant engineeringgraduates caught in the labyrinth of a huge software company “Adieu Consultancy Solutions” (modelled on Tata Consultancy Services). Kiran Arothe is a senior software engineer, who has joined A.C.S. because they promised to post him in Bombay after the initial orientation. A.C.S. is shown as a soul-less company, interested only in profits. When it comes to recruiting young people like Vikram Gupta from college campuses, they paint a rosy picture of their future career; once they have been inducted, they are made to sign a three-year bond. But youngsters still leave, in spite of this. So the Vice President, Digambaram, and Dr Nageshwar, head of the Human Resource Department, get the brilliant idea of making the youngsters submit their original  certificates. How Vikram manages to outwit the company, and get justice for Kiran Arothe, forms the plot of the novel. Vikram Gupta is a refreshingly different protagonist;  he does not suffer from any deep-seated anxiety, or worry about the clash between modernity and tradition in India, his concerns are more mundane. The Bengali Vikram dislikes everything in Chennai — the food, the climate and the work atmosphere. His longing to return to Calcutta, to his mother and dog, is vividly portrayed. He has problems renting accommodation (and A.C.S. is unhelpful).  “Renting to bachelors is always a big problem” says the landlord’s daughter, so Vikram claims that he is going to get married soon. This leads to some  hilarious situations in the novel, especially after Vikram meets and falls in love with a young girl whose sense of humour matches his own. There is a wide variety of characters. There is no attempt to present all managers as villains and the young recruits as angels. 

            Sengupta’s second novel, Big Apple Two Bites features a more experienced software
professional who is sent to the U.S.A. as a consultant. His two visits to New York (the “Big Apple”) in 1998-1999 and three years later, are recounted in the second person, adding a touch of freshness to the narration. The first person (autobiographical) account is fairly
common; here the novelist manages to sustain the technique of referring to the protagonist in the second person right through the book: 

And it is solitude that you crave. You want to get away from the crowd and open your new book. The one you bought the day before. The impromptu party in the Clifton apartment made it impossible for you to read it the previous evening. You dearly want to make up for lost time. (Big Apple Two Bites 5) 

The higher management in the software company seems to have grown even more unethical, regarding everything in terms of dollars. They have no qualms about dismissing hard working young engineers, once the project is over, they care only for their own advancement. Big Apple Two Bites  shows the varied responses of Indian professionals visiting America. Some grumble about the food and culture, others
direct all their efforts towards saving money. Sen’s time in New York revolves around the Japanese martial art form Aikido, and an attractive colleague, Allison Palmer. His American colleagues are individualized — while Bruce and Allison are warm and welcoming, others resent the Indians who seem to be taking jobs away from them. Maureen says about Indians, “You have a dog? I thought
they ate dogs in India … Well, what can people do? They don’t have enough to eat. . . So they eat whatever is available . . . dogs. . . jobs. . .”  The novelist deals with great sensitivity with the issue of outsourcing, an issue which is of concern to many in India.

    (Shyamala A Narayan The Software Professional in Indian English Fiction, The Critical Endeavour Vol. XV, June 2009, pp.22-33.)

It is the familiarity with English language that makes India a major force in the IT Industry.

Coming back to the concern of Sengupta’s friendly neighbour about the local nuances, there are moments when they do creep into the foray. And in that case, it is not too difficult to extend the English Language to absorb the new word. Shyamala A. Narayan explains this as she talks of the technique used in Sengupta’s Big Apple 2 Bites, in which the main character expounds on dhop, a Bengali word which is a curious enhancement of the English ‘lie’.

  Sen calls his presentation “A load of dhop”, a Bangla word he finds hard to translate. He and his room-mate Aniket (another Bengali) “have had a philosophical discourse on the role dhop plays in the industry”, and the conclusions they reach are illustrated in the novel:

Dhop flows through the veins of the corporate world like sustaining lifeblood. It is
like prana, like chi, the primordial cosmic force of the industry. Flow­ing from all the levels of organisational hierarchy to oth­ers. From superiors to subordinates, from middle manag­ers to upper management, from upper management to the customers. As one progresses up the ladder of the corpo­rate hoopla, one graduates to different levels of  dhop. At the marketing stage, it reaches the hands of magicians, the artistic alchemists of dhop, those creative craftsmen who can metamorphose dhop from one form to another, extend and expand it to limitless proportions — ultimately performing that transformation, that black magic that con­verts dhop into green-backed dollars. Akin to converting energy into matter. It is the miracle of one of these gurus of dhop that has made you travel across the world to try to create your own brand of dhop involving Neural Net­works. At the extreme top of the management, there are people like Chiranjeet Kar and Ravi .. .  for whom life and dhop  have lost the sense of duality, who live, be­lieve and propagate dhop. (33)

(Ibid)

These novels point to serious issues like the ethics of corporate management and the importance of human bonds, even as they depict the lives of software professionals. The language does not draw attention to itself, both Priyo Ghosh and Arunabha Sengupta are interested primarily in telling a story.   

The question remains whether these writings in English do capture the essence of India. However, this statement itself is vague. India is complex and the essence is intriguing because it is elusive. Ms Narayan does sum it up neatly as:

“Many of (the) new novels are simple entertainers, but some have a deeper significance, even though the mode is social comedy. Another criticism levelled against these new novels is that  the protagonists are confined entirely to urban life (in Singapore
and New York) and  metropolitan India; but no work can encompass the whole of India, and the software professional and the metropolis are as much a part of India as the farmer and the village. The important thing is that stereotypes, whether in terms of characters or situations, are avoided.” 

(Ibid.)