The Simple Acts

“To be simple is not a simple thing” 

 E.E Tian Hong ( On Writing) 

A few months back, I had started noticing all around me acts of simpleness and austerity. This blog is all about the concept of simplitude which is quite essential for a balanced and satisfied life. It takes a huge amount of sacrifice and patience to be simple. There are external ( society, financial) and internal factors ( discipline, will-power) that makes people lead a simple life. 

I remember reading somewhere that we live in a world of excess. We have everything and sometimes it is difficult to take a stock of the materialsitic things that we have. Today the adage ‘Each one according to their means and not according to their greed’ has become a cliched one. This buying power, that we enjoy is so shocking that it has turned us into monsters imbued with a feeling of self-importance and self neglect. We have lost oursleves in this act of hording that it has become mindless and  self-destructive. 

I have seen people who turns off their cellular data when it is not required. There are people, with great eye-strain and difficulty read e-books on their small screen sized smart phones. There is one trainee who created a practical and minimalistic logo using a simple software like MS Excel and MS Paint. I met a trainee once who was using a pencil which hardly fitted in her hand.

It took more than three months for me to publish this post. I was preoccupied and maybe I have forgotten all about living the simple ways of life. 

and the year ends in red...

Thus the month of December has dawned upon us. In this part of the world where I live , the season is filled with a theme color - red. Mid-December will witness the 43rd National Day of Bahrain. The flag of this island kingdom is a combo of red and white. Everywhere the flags are displayed prominently. The trees are decorated with the red LED lights and even the cars are painted red. Alongside these festivities of national fervor, we have Christmas, which again is celebrated in a reddish grand way - thanks to the presence of the US navy and the not so negligible population of Christian expats from Philippines. Uncle Santa and his gift wrappings adds the Red factor to the celebrations. I will end this year witnessing lots and lots of red and who complains when the town itself is painted in red.

My Writing Ethos

There are too many ideas and too many apps for putting those ideas down. The bad experience of yesterday was an eye-opener. I still persist on making some headway in the direction of recording ideas and thoughts. Before I start writing I would like to map my writing ethos.

Primarily, i use my wonderful days to record my positive thoughts of the day. Momento is another app which records my Facebook and other social networking links which also includes Twitter and Instagram. I would like to work on my story using Scrivener and edit the same using Index card and Simple note. ( I am yet to discover the full functionalities of these apps) My blogging is another writing activity for which I need some channel of publishing. I am currently using Mac Journal app for iOS and Mac exclusively for my writing. Day one app will be the writing spot where I will jot down my inner thoughts.

Philomena and the changing concept of motherhood..

'The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time' - T. S Eliot

The movie is about the real life story of a mother in search of her son who was taken away from her via an illegal adoption system which was practiced by the Irish catholic church . Even though the movie looks at the concept of motherhood with all its cliched frills, it moves away from the familiar to the unfamiliar in an easy-breezy way. Philomena is also a portrayal of old age, a time when everybody has got this strong urge to 'reclaim her past'. She reveals the news about her one night stand at the park and the unsanctioned pregnancy to her daughter.

The second most important thread in the story is about this journalist who gets entrapped in his own political web. He is lost and is not sure what to do with his career as a journalist. He lives in a state of indecisiveness, oscillating between two career plans - writing a book about Russian history and the search for a human interest story. He finally decides to take the latter one and that brings him close to Philomena.

In the bonus section of the DVD, Mr. Coogan, who is also the producer talks about how a newspaper article got him hooked on to the story of Philomena. He was more interested in working on the bonding between Philomena and Mr. Martin Sixsmith. The movie, in a way juxtaposes these two characters - Philomena represents dogged determination and an unflinching belief in God whereas, Martin is an atheist and is wavering when it comes to making decisions.

The movie made me look at some of the recent incidents that has rocked my home state of Kerala. This events makes us rethink about the concept of motherhood in these challenging times. The first incident is about a 11 month old child, which was send on para-sailing.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kozhikode/Kerala-11-month-old-girl-sent-on-solo-parasailing-by-parents/articleshow/35452923.cms 

The second incident is about the hundreds of children who were brought from North India to be dumped in Kerala orphanages  without any proper documents.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/kerala-over-400-children-rescued-in-suspected-child-trafficking-case/476062-62-126.html

These are just two incidents of the many cases of sexual abuse and killings that are happening around the world.  There is the Sudanese mother who is sentenced to death and the Pakistani pregnant woman who was stoned to death for marrying against the wish of her family. I am just wondering about the paradigm shift that has happened with the concept of mother hood and the rampant commercialization of children and woman.

Magic of Marquez

Sleeping beauty and the air plane..

This afternoon,for the first time, I read a literary piece written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The chance literary encounter happened when a story of GMM got published in the Malayalam page pulp, quasi-feminist magazine Vanitha. It is titled ‘Sleeping Beauty and the air plane’ which is taken from the short story collection ‘Strange Pilgrims’.

The story was so empowering that I read it standing and transfixed to the ground. It is gladdening to know that my constant hobnobbing with the intricacies of ESL has not spoiled the taste for literature. As I continued to read the biography of GMM, i came across this interesting comment about Gabito from Salman Rushdie. The article was entitled - 'Marquez the Magician' which was written after GMM won the Nobel Prize for Literature. ' He is one of the Nobel judges' most popular choices for years, one of the few true magicians in contemporary literature, an artist with the rare quality of producing work of the highest order that reaches and bewitches a mass audience'

The story triggered in me many personal thoughts. I was even thinking about my Pune bus journey ( seated in my dream vehicle - Airavat and seated next to an iPod-Jazz memory)  and the Jagathy -Nitya Menon starrer episode in the movie - Kerala cafe.

GMM is a person I am internalizing these days. His biography is reveals - word by word the man behind the magical words. The story is a narrative of an ordinary incident that happened in a flight from France to New York. The ordinary is turned into the extra-ordinary by the infusion of some more ordinary events and incidents. The old Dutch lady with her fourteen bags and the snow fall which delayed the flight are some of the usual occurrences in an air-passenger's life. The references to the Japanese bourgeois watching naked nymphs sleeping is a classic example of how GMM’s world view is shaped by numerous literary landscapes from all corners of the world. The Japanese author mentioned here is Yasunari Kawabata - (Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award - Wikipedia).

The sight of the co-passenger brings in GMM, the pangs of love and lust. His breath is laced with passion and he concludes by saying that - ‘there is nothing more beautiful in nature than a beautiful woman’

Charm of a place...

Traveling to different countries makes one experience different cultures. So far I have traveled to five countries. I had the time and space to write about some of these countries. Reading Garcia Marquez's biography this morning made me reflect on the possibility of writing about the country in which I live right now. Gabito was traveling in Europe from Paris to Moscow to Budapest. He was a keen observer and had some authentic reflections to make about the countries he had visited. Sample these words about London - ' When I arrived in London i thought the English talked to themselves in the street. Later I realized they were saying sorry. On Saturdays, when the whole city piles into Piccadilly Circus, it is impossible to move without bumping into someone. Then there is a vast buzzing, a uniform street chorus: 'Sorry'.' When his eyes saw Moscow, he wrote - "I didn't want to know a Soviet Union with its hair done up to receive a visitor. Countries are like women, you need to know then when they've just got up."

Lost and Discovered...

The Lost series is based on an uncharted island. To me, the 'island' is the main character in the series. It exists in multiple level of meanings and allusions. The island itself is an experimental ground where scientific and metaphysical elements clash. The human characters are just pawn in this experiment. The story takes us back to the days of Abel and Cain and the Original sin. There were rules on that that should not have been breached. Rules which were rooted in the concepts of good and evil. The creator created the beings with these traits.

The island was lost to the whole world until the crash of the Oceanic flight. When the island was discovered, the passengers in the flight were lost from the face of this earth ( at least it seemed like that). The characters are all from diverse backgrounds and most of them had a strong sense of the past. When they are lost they seem to rediscover their own self which had been lost in the hustle and bustle of life.There is Sayid who was a republican guard who was faced with the challenge of interrogating his girlfriend. Then there is my favourite Jack, the doctor who was taking his father for a burial. Locke is the teacher who worships the island the moment 'his feet touched the ground'. The leading female character is Kate who is a convict running away from Law. Locke and Kate are ones who wants to stay because the a normal and ordinary life is lost for them in the (real) world. My second favourite character is Hurley, the meat ball who specialises in bear hug.

Lost is all about the sense of 'letting go'. Nobody owns anything in this world. I maybe a proud owner of something but the ownership has its limit. Ben, Locke and the 'Others' wanted to stay in the island. They are in a state of escapism bordering on possessiveness. Lost also shows that possessiveness leads to kind of aimlessness. You possess something and that thing possess you. The series moves through different dimensions. It starts off as a common experience of being lost in the island which have read and seen in both literary and cinematic represenatations like Robinson Crusoe, The Lord of the Flies, Castaway and even in Life of Pi. The new arrivals on the island are plagued by a sense of bewilderment of the space and strangeness about the mysterious characters around them. They all got connected in the stage where they were trying to salavge what is left of the Oceanic flight. The slow motion montage is quite emotional and creates a sense of bonding between the viewers and the characters. They are aware of the dangers that are present in the island and also of the eeriness of some of the characters. The moment they decide to face the dangers the series moves on to the next stage. Here are similarities:

I notice: that the hills

which the eyes make flat as wall, welded

together, open as ai move

to let me through; become

endless as priaries; that the trees

grow spindly, have their roots

often in swamps; that this is a poor country;

that a cliff is not known

as rough except by hand, and is

therefore inaccessible. Mostly

that travek is not the easy going

from point to point, a dotted

line on a map, location

plotted on a square surface

but that i move surrounded by a tangle

of branches, a net of air and alterante

light and dark, at all times;

that there are no destinations

apart from this

(Margaret Atwood - Journey to the Interior)

The journey into the interior of the island is both physical and psychological. Jacks confronts his father, Kate reflects on her law breaking past. Charlie sees himself performing with his brother in their rock band. Locke is fearless one and enjoying his much anticipated adventure in the outback. They explore the island and discover the third element in the story - the science behind the existence of the island.

From this point the series takes the viewer for a roller coaster ride. There are references to folklore, myths and legends. The story moves forward in time but the characters are struck in a time trap. Every time the wheel turns the story and its landscape change. Characters are introduced and re-introduced. Story and the characters moves around the world keeping the umbilical chord with the island intact.

At the end it all boils down to the fact that good will always prevail over the bad. Personally i felt the ending to be a bit confusing. It was as if the white light clouded my vision. The church scene gave the series an unwanted religious tone. Some of the answers were received but others still remained a mystery. It took one year for me to watch the whole series which comprised of 6 seasons. There were instances where I had watched a whole season ( 6 DVD's) within a duration of two to three days. This is the first time that i had spent time watching a TV series. The mysterious plot was the reason why i got hooked into Lost. I was lost sometimes but the quick 8 minutes recaps brought me back. My tryst with lost was personally rewarding and it was one of the few instances in life where I felt satisfied and happy.

Persian graffiti

Francis Itty Cora and Art of Historical Fiction…

To read Historical fiction in my own mother tongue was something unique. I am not a stranger to this genre. My first tryst with this type of writing was some years back when I stumbled upon the novel - Vishakanyaka by S.K Pottakadu. The novel chronicles the life of immigrants from Travancore who got resettled in the western ghats i.e Wayanad. S.K cleverly creates a world of tryst between nature and man. The arrival of missionaries and how the locals treated them with a certain amount of skepticism and xenophobia. The portrayal of Vishakanyaka (poisonous virgin) as the spirit of the western ghat and Joseph as the innocent boy from the south who gets entrapped in the animalistic instincts of nature is portrayed in all its ferocity.

It was during my stay in Chennai that I was introduced to the African American writer named Alex Haley. He was a master of faction mixing fiction and facts. The seminal work of Alex Haley titled Roots traces his ancestry to a village in Kenya. Even though the novel was dubbed as a work of faction, i didn't see much of that genre. It was only when I read The City of Joy that I really felt the historic elements in the world of imagination.

Dominique Lapierre enthralled me again with his novel It was five past midnight in Bhopal. I was quite excited about these works because they genre of faction or historical fiction really appealed to my senses.

My reading pathway then took me to the novels of Elizabeth Kosotova. The novel The Historian narrated the story of Count Dracula. I purchased the second book titled 'The Swan Thieves' but could't read because of its sheer volume. I am searching for the ebook version of the same.

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code became the next book that took me to the world of historical fiction. It is a masterpiece and the book traversed through precarious literary, religious, and historical terrains. It was an instant hit and i remember travelling to Bangalore to watch the movie version since it was banned in Chennai.

It was Bobby uncle who mentioned about the novel by T.D Ramakrishnan tiled Francis Itty Cora. I was completely blown away by the sheer amount of information that the book carried. Seated in a rural town of Kerala, the author has managed to bring in the whole world in front of our eyes. The novel moves from Kunnamkulam to Florence in Italy and then to Lima in Peru. The story is narrated through letters and old manuscripts. There are several instances where the main characters are interacting with history and historical figures like Hypatia, Vasco De Gama, Roman generals and even artists of the Florentine school of painting.

The novel fascinated me because of the local flavour that it encapsulated. The Kunnamkulam lingo,cultural and religious ambiance is depicted in an authentic way. The story is centred in this town and its past. The titular hero used to live there and he was fondly known as Kora pappan. He was a patriarch and was also a business magnet. He had numerous ships and he used to conduct business with far off lands like Egypt, Abu Gharib Prsion, Iraq, and Italy. In one of his travels he never returned. He was enthralled by the spirit of Renaissance that he witnessed in Florence. In spite of his stay in Florence he was able to keep contacts with his hometown. It was in Florence that he heard about the Hypatian school of mathematics. He was deeply influenced by the concept of symmetry in nature. He found some co-relation between the Hypatian and the Kerala school of Mathematics. Two story threads which i found a bit unusual is the reference to cannibalism and the 'love school' that functioned in cochin. The author seems to have included them to garner more readership from the so called masses. The ritualistic act of offering grown up girl to Korapappan also takes the novel to the realms of black magic and occult.

The novel is interspersed with mathematical equations, sanskrit verses and quotes from ancient manuscripts and palmyra leaves. All these clearly shows the hardships that the author underwent to bring the story to its complete shape. Three words that guide this novel throughout are - Research, Research and Research.

I admire the craft of writing a novel and the pain behind the act of creation. It is a time consuming and time bound activity. Ihave been toying with an idea for the past one year and still is struggling to get that idea into a proper and decent shape

A Student's Profile...

He is the cynosure of the whole class. He is the reason for their smiles and frustration. He walks like as if he just learned walking and he is little slow in his speech. He represents the general mood in the class — irritated too easily and dead slow in understanding. He is somebody who is here for a long time and he is just aimlessly drifting in this learning cauldron searching for nothing particular. I was curious to know more about this entity. I asked him questions about his family and his friends. I found that he is more of an indoor person. He is addicted to the internet and he spends a huge amount of money and time on the web. A sure that he is a recluse or he is made one by the society. I know him as a trainee but I can create a bigger picture by putting together bits and pieces from his life. I can imagine his parents who took care of him from the moment they knew that something was not right in his brain. Some nerves are plugged into the wrong slots. I have these questions and some of the possible answers that creep into my mind when thinking about his parents.
- What kind of emotions do they have towards him?
- Do they feel dejected?
- How do they cope with the fact that he differently abled?
- Maybe they take refuge in the Divine power.
- They are used to his presence and antics.
- They need lots of patience when they deal with him. I have exercised great caution and self-control in the class. He is one person who lacks the
dexterity which is much needed in a classroom.
I don’t teach him anymore. Like leaves falling away from trees, he too is gone, buried in the layers fallen memories….

Sawadee kaap - Thailand Diary Part 1

Thailand is a free and peaceful country. Recently we had the opportunity to live there for a period of one month. It was purely a professional trip for attending the CELTA certificate course. The location was in the north of Thailand in a place named Chiang Mai. We stayed in a resort cum spa known as Vdara.Chiang Mai is far away from the hubbub of the capital city Bangkok. This short stay in the rural country side lies juxtaposed in our mind with the racy life of the cities like Pattaya and Bangkok. CELTA program was a highly demanding one in terms of work and lesson plan preparation. We were free only in the weekends so we tried our best to squeeze in more sightseeing trips on weekeneds.

One of our first trips was to the Wacharatan waterfall situated some 50 kms from the Chiang Mai city centre. It took almost one hour for us to reach the spot which is located in dense reserved forest area.On our way to the waterfalls we visited an an ancient Buddhist temple. The temple was some 600 years old.and it was one of the ancient and historically relevant monuments of Thailand. A Buddhist monastery was attached to the temple and we saw some Americans dressed in the Buddhist attire participating in the holy ceremonies.

The waterfall was a great sight as the whole place was part of the reserve forest.

The huge white column of water cascading down the green mountainous slope offered an excellent view. We decided to spend some more time listening to the thunderous roar of the waterfall. We took our position on the stumps of huge trees Which served as seats in a coffee bar located conveniently next to the waterfalls. We felt the calmness and ferociousness of the surroundings as we sipped coffee and talked to our guide cum driver about the drug related threats in the area. In the coffee shop we befriended two Buddhist monks who were on a journey to discover Thailand. They were quite animated in their conversation and they asked us about the Tibetan monks who were living in exile in India and they were quite happy to know that India is providing the logistical support to the monks in exile. We ended the first day of our trip by eating dinner in an indian restaurant. Thai food was quite bland in taste and we were in search of something to burn our tongues. We enjoyed the food and left the restaurant with our tummy singing 'jai ho'.

The next leg of our sight seeing adventure took us to the Walking street in Chiang Mai. The market extended to 2-3 miles and all sorts of traditional stuff was displayed and sold there.We saw puppetry show from Japan, Chinese lamp sellers, Chihuahua's on display,and lots of Thai food. The walking street looked like a Thai version of R.K Narayan's market place in Malgudi.
The walking street can be termed as the commercial life line of Chiang Mai. The fact that Thai people were dependent on tourism were quite evident from the hustle and bustle of the evening market. The poverty induced misery and hardships were etched on the faces of the locals. They smiled and laughed for the sake of pleasing their buyers and rolled back into their own gloomy world once the transaction is done.Artists performing traditional art forms occupied the middle of the street. They played on some Thai country music with great involvement and vigour. The market and street became too crowded as it became dark. We could see sorts of nationalities there - French, Spanish and even some Indians. Among all the din in the market one little girl stole our attention. She was dressed in the traditional Thai dance costume and swayed to the slow music emanating from the recorder. She reminded us of the exquisite artists made popular by Arthur Gordon in his novel - Memoirs of Geisha.

The girl had a placard in front of her which stated the reason behind her act. It read - No scholarship, Please donate money for my Education.

We took some time visit the Royal Gardens where we saw the Tulip flower festival. The garden housed the Royal palace and horticulture products from around the world. We figured out that the garden stretched for miles and miles. So we hopped into the tour bus and enjoyed the endless flower beds and the world famous topiary of Thai elephants and other things. The royal palace inside the park had elegant wall paintings chronicling the life of King Rama IX,the Great who belongs to the Chakri dynasty. The palace also contained various religious motifs.The tulips that were on display was Siam Tulips which was cultivated only in Thailand and it is different in size and shape from the tulips found in Netherlands. The Royal garden is the permanent venue for the Annual royal flora festival held in the month of december.

(This concludes the first part of Thai diaries. Still to come Life @ CELTA, Bangkok and Pattaya - Illusions and Realties, Train journey from CNX to BKK.)

Classifying N the classified...

People are eager to classify people and events for easy understanding. stereotypes are created and preserved as idols. any attempt to break and create a brand new image is oppressed and throttled. This is the world. The morning banter of my house owner about the killing of an Indian lady and the abduction of the child in America makes me think that he is just over blowing the image of america as an evil country. I don't have any special inkling towards that country and I am not a intellectual like Chomsky to dissect political or social involvement of America. For 10 years that man worked in Russian Consulate and he is an ardent communist supporter. In his eyes America is still the epitome of Capitalistic values. Why, we don't have capitalists in India. Not everybody is a capitalist in America. There are poor people in the US. On one side the Indian middle class yearns for a NRI status. The young generation is not bothered about the rusty ideas of capitalism and feeding the poor. They want to taste success and they are ready to achieve it at any cost. 

Babyettan – A Verbal Remembrance...

To me he was the man who launched a thousand smiles. It is quite an emotional act to write about somebody who is no longer present in this world.  The charm and the aura of that person becomes all the more vibrant when there is a trail of lovely memories associated with that person.

I have many fond memories about Babyettan. I have always felt his presence right from my childhood. He was my dad’s best friend and if I remember correctly they were like carrot and peas. They had their own share of fun and exotic escapades. They even had a special kind of language to converse with each other filled with tamil and Kunnamkulam slang.

Babyettan was fond of traveling and just one year back he had visited his relatives in Mumbai. He was a good conversationalist. He kept his audience always in the comfort zone and made them laugh and roll on the floor. I used to eagerly wait for his arrival at our home. Usually his arrival was notified to us by a loud shout of my dad's name. The visit normally lasted for some hours. This social interaction always reminded me of the weekly roundup shows in news channels. Those days the outside world came inside my dad's shelter breaking the barriers of cement and stones.

He was an avid reader and this helped him to stay abreast with the latest happenings in the world of literature and cinema. He never missed a good cinema. He was acutely critical about the dwindling quality of the malayalam cinema.  He was a regular visitor at some of the literary events in the city. Being part of the All India Radio circle ( AIR) he was always invited for these events. He used to subscribe to magazines and usually he read for a considerable amount of time before hitting the sack.

His fiery spirit is something which I admired. He took life as it came and never had any real worries. Maybe people who took life as a mathematical equation will find his way of life bit difficult to accept. He had his individuality and it was unique. He lost his soul mate years ago and lived his life with exuberance and joy. Maybe the soul mate's passing away was one of his deep and private thoughts.

He was a social being and his presence was felt in almost every social occasions like weddings, baptisms, funerals and death anniversaries. He enjoyed the act of sharing his travel itinerary with people around him. Due to this social gatherings he was always on the move. He travelled by train and bus frequently and he liked to walk.

He liked ot walk in the morning and in the evening. He had his own speed and unique style. He usually carried an umbrella with him. The umbrella served as both as a walking stick and as a protection from sun.

There are many memories associated with Babyettan. When I was student in Loyola college chennai he had come there to visit me.  I was a student there and he had come to Chennai to visit his relative. We both went for a walk in the campus. He was lucky that day to see the actress of yesteryears – Seema. He was surprised and thrilled and I could sense the youthful memories flooding his mind and he was gripped with the waves of nostalgia. He was the one who conveyed to me the news that my article has been published in education edition of ' The Hindu' .

He liked good and tasty food. He experimented with different types of food. I used to check with him for all the latest information about the new food outlets in Calicut.

His lived his life in three places and all the three had a common association. They began with the letter K - Kunnamkulam, Kochi, and Kozhikode. He was born in Kunnamkulam. He had both spiritual and intimate connections with this place. He was a frequent visitor at Arthat church and he liked attending the Sunday service there. Kochi was more like a work place for him. Kozhikode served as both personal and professional landscape for him. He was the familiar face in Malaparamba, Calicut - 9. He will be missed on the roads of KSHB colony. His face and voice will linger in the minds of those people who knew him.

I pay my deepest condolences to his family...

May his good soul rest in peace….

Book Review The Big Book Shelf by Sunil Sethi

Book Review
The Big Book Shelf by Sunil Sethi
The author in conversation with 30 famous writers
The book was purchased from Calicut airport before boarding the flight to Muscat.
In the blurb the author says that ' writers are often reticent about how and why they write, how their ideas and themes develop or how their charcters and plots emerge. they can be equally reserved about their personal histories.
This book gives a peep into the lives of literary giants including Nobel laureates, Booker Prize winners, acclaimed historians, biographers, and philiosphers. The book is dedicted to all those who regard books as enduring companions in life. The introductions talks about the birth of the talk show on NDTV - Just Books. The show was neatly divided into the following sections
1) Book Pills - short take on the literary happenings of the week
2) My bedside book - well known people talking about their favourite books.
3) My Pick - A list of new titles in bookshops.
4) Interview with the author - ( The seed for this compilation)

This book is all about the passion of reading and the love for letters, sprinkled with quotes from great authors - Sample this from Nadibe Gordimer - Reading my dear is the only training for a writer from a younger age. You only become a writer by being a compulsive reader. Paul Theroux advices young writers like this - Go away. Yes. Leave home, leave your parents and leave all the comforting things that hold you back...because if you stay...people will always ask you what you are doing - what you are writing,what you are publishing. They ask you questions that you can't answer.

The book also gives us a glimpse into the working culture of the writers. Jeffrey Archer's regime goes like this - 'I write up to seventeen drafts. I get away for two months and I wake up at 5:30 in the morning. I write from six to eight and take a two-hour break, I again write from two until four, followed by another two-hour break, I again write from two until four, followed by another two-hour break, then I write from six until eight, light supper, go to bed at 9:30 or 10:00 and begin again at 5:30 the next day. Fifty days of that in a row. Khushwant Singh rises at 4 a.m everyday, hasn't missed a newspaper deadline in sixty years and is ruthless in dismissing visitors. 'People don't drop in. I don't see them without an appointment and when I invite them it's strictly between 7 p.m and 8 p.m. I can be very rude to anyone who stays even a minute after eight' Some authors who are younger, juggles two careers - for example - Upamanyu Chatterjee, who is also a civil servant sets himself a ceratin number of words a day or how to resolve an idea ora problem in the plot, as a daily target. He writes every morning before leaving for office.He takes about five years to complete a novel. The story of Nadeem Aslam is inspiring for all those who want to master the language - Aslam grew up in a small town in Pakistan, attending an Urdu-medium school till the age of fourteen, when his family was forced to migrate to Britain to escape poiltical persecution. " When I arrived in England my English was, "This is a cat."... My life was broken in half. Instead of going to college, for many years he eked out a meagre living, working on building sites and in bars so that he could read in libraries. He would retreat into a private world to be able to write.'There were times when I draped the windows with black cloth. There was no phone, no TV and no radio, no newspapers and I just filled up the freezer with food and didn't leave the house for two and a half months.

The book also examines the themes and motifs found in the work of these writers. Some of them like Amartya Sen, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh and Kiran Desai left India and thier literary world view was changed. The same can be said of Salman Rushdie and others who belong to the Indian diaspora. There is also a group of foreign writers like Paul Theroux, Mark Tully and William Dalrymple who likes India and makes the land a part of their literary landscape.

Some of my favorite writers who are featured in this book are:
Kiran Desai
Umberto Eco
Gunter Grass
Orhan Pamuk
Salman Rushdie
Amartya Sen
Vikram Seth
Khushwant Singh

Let America be America again - Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That's made America the land it has become.

O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home--

For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,

And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?

Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we've dreamed

And all the songs we've sung

And all the hopes we've held

And all the flags we've hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay--

Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--

The land that never has been yet--

And yet must be--the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--

Who made America?

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath--

America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain--

All, all the stretch of these great green states--

And make America again!