The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera’s Book Stays With You Forever

JeevaNayagiLeave a comment

It was a long and stirring affair. It lasted longer than I intended it to, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. It was a whole new experience, something I have never had in all these years. During these 8 months, I tried to be more loyal than I ever was. People told me I would feel that way with Ayn Rand, but it had to be Milan Kundera. I deliberately misplaced my bookmarks so that I could re-read some of those chapters again. At one point, I dropped the bookmarks and started reading again from wherever I wanted to. Even after all re-reading, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ never stopped amusing me with its philosophical speculations. Even as I write this, I look at my bedside table and see that the book still refuses to leave my side. Was it because Kundera challenged Nietzsche in the very first chapter of the book or is it because he named the pet dog, ‘Karenin’ after Anna Karenina or was it the scene of Tomas standing at the window of his flat looking across the courtyard at the opposite walls? It must be all of it.

The book takes you through the lives of four people – Tomas, Tereza, Sabina and Franz and of course, there is Karenin too. Although Kundera seemed to portray Tomas as the protagonist, I wasn’t entirely convinced he was. One moment it is Tomas, the next it is Sabina, a lot of times it happens to be Tereza and at times, Oedipus too. I can’t begin to explain how beautifully these characters are built around a changing political landscape. It is unbelievable that Kundera could convince you that it is their inherent darkness and vulnerabilities that make these characters stronger. Kundera’s idea of how “characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing, in a nutshell, a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about” is often quoted while talking about the book. However, what he says later in the same chapter summarizes what is wonderful about the book. I quote him again – “The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I, myself have circumvented. It is that crossed border (the border beyond which my own “I” ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about. The novel is not the author’s confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become.” The only other author who blew my mind away with a characterization of this sort was Leo Tolstoy. Probably, that is why ‘The Unbearable Lightness of being” was at once hailed by critics as a contemporary classic.

I consider this, a book that has no beginnings and no endings. The book begins even before Kundera introduces you to Tomas and it never really ends. You are already told what to expect. But, the road leading to the destination is a stretch of endless loops which keeps bringing you back to where it all started. One moment you are with Tomas, the surgeon and moments later with Tomas, the window washer following him in his conquests as he continues to explore female idiosyncrasies. With Tereza, Sabina and Franz, you get to live the fear, thrive with the betrayal and then find liberation in love. But it doesn’t just end there. The lives of these people serve as a passage for the readers to walk in and witness the scenes that play out in the Czech society torn by the Russian invasion.

The book is an elaborate philosophical discourse throwing at you questions of lightness and weight, light and dark, body and soul and more. I loved how Kundera took time to dwell upon some subjects like ‘the eternal return’, ‘kitsch’, ‘compassion’ and even Beethoven in much detail. Some of the images that Kundera created like the dying bird, the bowler hat or the actress in the grand march are unforgettable. I must also mention that the symbolism that lies behind each of these images are quite intriguing and it leaves you pondering for a long time.

As much as the book is a philosophical delight, Kundera’s political dissent which is more than evident is quite an exciting backdrop to the events that unfold in the book. The metaphorical likening of the Communists to Oedipus is one of the best I have read so far. That way, this is a must-read book for any left-wingers with an open mind because the story of Oedipus will certainly lend them a perspective they might never have dreamt of.

As a reader, I am in a rather strange situation. A part of me can go on and on about the book while the other part has been rendered speechless that I am frantically hunting for words to tell you how overwhelming an experience it was. There is a not a page in the book that I will suggest that you skip because almost every page has something quote-worthy. What I read was only a translation in English and I can’t stop wondering what I might have missed from the author’s original version. Nevertheless, this is a book that is going to stay with me forever and I can see myself picking it up every now and then to be lost in those endless loops. Was this ‘the eternal return’ that Kundera was talking about?

The Trial Room

Abhishek JhaLeave a comment

A huge, bulky, and drooping belly characterized the organism’s appearance. His back was bent to overcome the shoulders and the head at any moment. The thighs appeared as though transplanted from an elephant. The organism had the face of a basketball’s size. However, his legs were as thin as a grasshopper’s and it was incredulous to see that the giant whole rested on those fragile legs. His movements were slow, with heavy thuds on earth reminiscent of the times when Tyrannosaurus walked the planet. Flab hanging from every part of the body except the legs gave him the appearance of a cryptic creature worthy only of hatred and despise. When he opened his mouth to speak, it was the most abominable sight. One would wonder why such a creature needed to speak at all. Words were barely audible. Comprehension was impossible. The gigantic jaws distanced themselves from each other with sticky, greenish grime stuck in the passes between the teeth and floating from left to right and then right to left as the organism moved his head to retain them in his mouth. Why would he retain all the filth in his mouth – was beyond anyone’s understanding. The organism had perhaps made a promise to himself to become as loathsome as possible. One was not able to keep eyes on him for more than mere glances to just satiate the curiosity of the mind. Children were less afraid and they stared more consistently. It was the giant dinosaur straight out on the street from every movie they had watched. For them, it was a sight to behold and in their minds, they schemed for the destruction of this organism in case it turned rogue.

 

The organism was visibly naked but his genitals weren’t visible. A colony of bees swarmed on them and a grisly mix of honey and rotten blood dripped from the swarm. There were dogs pursuing the organism to get a drop on their tongue and were occasionally successful in laying a tongue or two on his genitals only to be attacked and stung by the bees that puffed their faces to double their size. The dogs never gave up and kept following the organism on the streets. Realizing he needed to get away from them, the incredible organism wanted to hire a cab and rush away.

Who would offer a cab to this monster though? Tired of signaling at the cabs, he resumed his slow, earth-pounding walk and climbed a few steps to a nearby clothing store. Before anyone could say anything, he picked up three t-shirts and entered the trial room.

It was a sham. He knew none of the t-shirts would fit him. However, he had to keep away from the dogs on the street and a few minutes in the trial room would perhaps bore the dogs and they would go away. The trial room had a mirror. He looked at himself and sat down with his head in his feeble hands. He wasn’t this monster always. The t-shirts he had picked were random but there is an order in randomness too. He had picked an XS, an S, and an M sized t-shirt.  All these three sizes fit him once when he was a kid, a teenager, and then when he entered his twenties. He entered his 30s becoming this monster and since then, he had to be naked all the time. There was nothing on the stores he could fit inside.

He looked at his loathsome appearance with disgust. However, with some kind of careless momentary zeal, he picked up the XS t-shirt to try. His hands occupied all the space inside it. A similar fate awaited the S and M sized t-shirts. He looked up in the mirror again and saw a man looking at him. The man wore a black coat and wielded a gavel in his right hand. There was a desk in front of him on which he rested his left hand. He looked into the organism’s eyes and hit the gavel on the desk. It sounded exactly like the organism’s loud thuds on the streets when he walked. There were two other people who stood in the mirror. Both of them wore black coats and were debating vigorously. One stood close to the organism and the other close to the one with the gavel. The organism stood in the witness-box and was being interrogated by the one who stood closer to him.

“Do you know what the charge against you is?”

“I do not know!”

“I do not understand. Can you speak with some clarity?”

 

The organism swallowed some of the grime in his mouth and answered.

 

“I do not know!”

“That’s better. You have broken into an outlet where they sell only XS, S, and M sized clothes. You know that’s illegal, don’t you?”

“I did not know.”

“That is illegal Mr. Monster. That’s a crime. You have barged into an out-of-bounds shop without permission and that’s why you were straightaway dispatched to the Trial Room.”

“But, I wasn’t dispatched away. I just ran in here to save myself.”

“Save yourself, from whom?”

“The dogs, the dogs were eating my genitals. I had to save myself.”

“Dogs, very well…”

At that moment, all the people in the trial room – the Judge, the two lawyers, and the audience transformed into rabid dogs and all pounced upon the genitals of the monster. Writhing in pain and wanting to yell for help, the monster couldn’t raise a sound till there remained nothing but balls of brown blood in place of genitals on his body. As the dogs licked the last drop of blood on the floor, they caught a sight of the organism standing in the trial room, charged towards him, and leaped out of the mirror. Stupefied in horror, the organism sunk his eyes into his tiny arms.  

 

A dull silence ensued. The dogs had turned back into Judge, lawyers, and audience. The organism found a witness box around him. The Judge scribbled on his desk and pronounced – “The trial room finds the accused guilty of gluttony and forbids him to enter any regular and healthy society. The trial room also awards the convict with a house arrest till such time as the convict makes himself fit for the XS, S, or M society or dies while trying, whichever is earlier.” The sentence was brought into force. At home, he was put on a running treadmill by his family members and his fragile hands were tied behind him. He began to lose his breath within a minute. His pet dog stood by his side, salivating and waiting for his end.

 

 

PaperPlanes#17 – Unearthing Bowl of Rice

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हमर कतका सुन्दर गाँव
जइसे लछिमी जी के पाँव …..
अंगन मा तुलसी चौरा
कोठा मा बइला गरुवा
लखठा मा कोला बारी…..
जेकर लकठा मा हवे मदरसा
जहां नित कुटे नित खाए।
            -Pyaarelal Gupt

(My village so beautiful, like the feet of goddess Lakshmi. There’s a Tulsi in the courtyard and a buffalo in the porch, there’s also a garden full of greens. There’s also a place of learning near, where daily you eat and you beat.)

This poem is called Hamar Katka Sunder Gaav (My so beautiful village), written by one of the progressive poets of Chhattisgarhi Literature. This poem has beautifully captured the underdog literature of Chhattisgarh. This has been a predominantly agrarian state with small holdings farmer everywhere. This society was never a market-based society. It was sustainable, it had no waste and the soil flourished like gold. This poem is also capturing this village India, where home is in the soil. The place you learn is where you have to beat paddy to get rice at the same time, you get beaten to eat well the food of knowledge and learning. In Chhattisgarhi, the word for wealth is Dhan and the word for paddy is Dhaan. These words are not coincidentally similar rather people here value paddy as much as one values gold. Rice is called the gold of soil and this emotion cannot be justly expressed in English. Another masterpiece by a poet called Lakshman Masturiya goes:

मय छत्तीसगढ़िया अंव
मय छत्तीसगढ़िया अंव ग…..
सोन उगाथौं माटी खाथौं
मान ले देके हांसी पांथौं
खेती खार संग मोर मितानी
घाम-मयारू हितवा पानी……….
(I am a Chhattisgarhiya. I shoot gold, eat soil, I struggle to catch a laugh, field soil my company, sunlight my kindred, water by my side… )

This poem is self-explanatory but what is so beautiful and catching is the fact that the poet prides upon eating soil. He prides that water, soil, air are his friends and accomplice. It seems that he is complaining in the third line where he says that he hardly catches up on laughter but this is a sacrifice he made consciously to be friends with sunlight and water. Life in Chhattisgarh starts with agriculture and ends with the gold called harvested paddy. But one shouldn’t be in darkness and understand that because it is an agrarian society, it did not have the evils of caste, class, gender discrimination. Like Ambedkar had always questioned the village republic, Masturiya is not also not considering village as a utopia rather he writes another poem called Mor Sang Chalaw Re (Walk along with me):

मोर संग चलव रे ,मोर संग चलव जी
वो गिरे थके हपटे मन अउ परे डरे मनखे मन
मोर संग चलव रे ,मोर संग चलव ग…….
नवा जोत लव नवा गांव बर, रस्ता नवा गढव रे
मैं लहरी अंव मोर लहर मं फरव फुलव हारियावव
महानदी मैं अरपा-पैरी तन मन धो फरियालव
कहां जाहू बड़ दूर हे गंगा पापी इहे तरव रे………

(Walk along with me, walk along with me, those fallen, tired, scared souls of the heart, walk along with me, walk along with me! To new life,new village and to build new tracks, I am a free wave, you too join my wave and cleanse yourself. I am like Mahanadi and her sisters, wash away your body, your heart. Too far flows Ganga, I pour all my sins here.)

This poem is for a camaraderie. It calls to all those deprived sections of the society, who needs help in their upliftment. It calls them and asks them to join as if the author is not a person but a wave, an ideology. His ideology is to free one and all from the evils of the society.This will create a new village, a new path, a path free of sins. He compares this with the ritual of washing away sins in Ganga among Hindus. He says Ganga is too far, so immerse yourself in my Mahanadi!

Chhattisgarhi literature has never been read and circulated extensively. It has never come out of the state itself. In this amateur attempt of bringing more poems to the world, I have tried to show how literature has been diverse and some diversities are more equal than others.

In this attempt, I have used constant help from Sanjeev Tiwari Sir, a lone man in digitizing Chattisgarhi culture through the website www.gurturgoth.com .I express my gratitude toward this support and help.

About the Author: Kalpita Wadher is a Masters’ student of Social Science but her undergrad in literature makes her combine society and people with words of solace.

PaperPlanes#16 – Quest To Discover Self With Kamala Das Surayya

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Search for identity has been the muse for many wordsmiths. The desperate need to define oneself and establish a sense of link somewhere, to someone had been informing the pages of literary compositions since ages. From Romanticism to Post- Colonialism, the time has been a witness to this struggle. This is especially pronounced in post-colonial literature, where the trauma of colonization gushed into creative narratives. In these, it is women, who were in double jeopardy on account of their gender along with post-colonial confusion, whose voices echo the loudest. Of these women, it is Kamala Das or ‘Madhavi Kutty’ as she is remembered fondly by some, who has carved a special place in Indian literature that can never belong to anyone else.

The first ever poem that I wrote was in my mother tongue Malayalam, titled ‘Pathimugam’. It was the consequence of assignment doled out by an ambitious teacher hoping to spur poets in our average, non-assuming 5th grade. Inventing words has always been a part of me since a time I am unable to trace back. Armed with the dictionary from my father’s half-eaten library, I set forth with my literary journey. That was my first tryst with poetry. The reason for this nostalgic journey is to pronounce the fact that I started out in my mother tongue, and gradually lost words in it when I began to consume more of English narratives. Being a brown-skinned Indian who now creates in English and not just translates, there were innumerable times I was shamed for my language preference. Language has been always been a medium to express feelings that pushed and prodded. Do I need a censorship there too?

I knew her as Kamala Das first. First through her anthology of poems ‘Summer In Calcutta’. Then through her autobiographical novel ‘My Story’, she was embraced as Madhavi Kutty. A fond voice that resonated with me. In the conservative, educated society of Kerala where I grew up, patriarchy is not so obvious as in other Indian states. It is masked and conveyed through culture or even excused under the grandiose of education. In that society, Kamala Das was a rebel. The modern day Robin Hood, who dared to take up arms and shatter the false-mirror of liberalism that Kerala wanted to project. She refused to let her voice be claimed too. She composed in English, raged in Malayalam and explored the one aspect of identity loss that she was experiencing: Language shaming. Why couldn’t she express in English when her words easily rhymed in it?

I read Kamala Das’s poem ‘Introduction’ much later, in the class of another genius Mrs Dennison. By then I had made acquaintance with Kamla Das and considered her mine. In the poem ‘Introduction’ Kamala Das voiced out and raged against the sense of identity that she had and the one people pushed onto her. This theme would go on to define much of this poetess’s life. A Malayali by birth, as E.M. Forster might describe her, she was English by tongue and Indian by the look. Her poem revealed her sense of struggle to conform. In the time when she found her voice, she was tormented by the constant reminder that English is an alien language which the post-colonial India should abandon. Even today Kerala, a home to intellectuals who continue to astound the whole Indian subcontinent with their English versification from Tharoor to Arundhati Roy, for the most part, remains hesitant to embrace the alienness of English that whole Indian subcontinent had invited to their very bedroom.

I don’t know politics but I know the names
Of those in power, and can repeat them like
Days of week, or names of months, beginning with Nehru.
I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar,
I speak three languages, write in
Two, dream in one.
Don’t write in English, they said, English is
Not your mother-tongue. Why not leave
Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in
Any language I like? The language I speak,
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses
All mine, mine alone.
It is half English, half Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,
It is as human as I am human, don’t
You see? It voices my joys, my longings, my
Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing
Is to crows or roaring to the lions, it
Is human speech, the speech of the mind that is
Here and not there, a mind that sees and hears and
Is aware. Not the deaf, blind speech
Of trees in storm or of monsoon clouds or of rain or the
Incoherent mutterings of the blazing
Funeral pyre. I was child, and later they
Told me I grew, for I became tall, my limbs
Swelled and one or two places sprouted hair.
When I asked for love, not knowing what else to ask
For, he drew a youth of sixteen into the
Bedroom and closed the door, He did not beat me
But my sad woman-body felt so beaten.
The weight of my breasts and womb crushed me.
I shrank Pitifully.
Then … I wore a shirt and my
Brother’s trousers, cut my hair short and ignored
My womanliness. Dress in sarees, be girl
Be wife, they said. Be embroiderer, be cook,
Be a quarreller with servants. Fit in. Oh,
Belong, cried the categorizers. Don’t sit
On walls or peep in through our lace-draped windows.
Be Amy, or be Kamala. Or, better
Still, be Madhavikutty. It is time to
Choose a name, a role. Don’t play pretending games.
Don’t play at schizophrenia or be a
Nympho. Don’t cry embarrassingly loud when
Jilted in love … I met a man, loved him. Call
Him not by any name, he is every man
Who wants. a woman, just as I am every
Woman who seeks love. In him . . . the hungry haste
Of rivers, in me . . . the oceans’ tireless
Waiting. Who are you, I ask each and everyone,
The answer is, it is I. Anywhere and,
Everywhere, I see the one who calls himself I
In this world, he is tightly packed like the
Sword in its sheath. It is I who drink lonely
Drinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange towns,
It is I who laugh, it is I who make love
And then, feel shame, it is I who lie dying
With a rattle in my throat. I am sinner,
I am saint. I am the beloved and the
Betrayed. I have no joys that are not yours, no
Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.
(Introduction)

Discovering this poem is a feat that is one’s own. I can promise each of her lines like a dagger is sure to pierce your consciousness. And I will leave you to that journey. In conclusion, I would like to draw your notice to the feminist overtones in her poem. Ironically, Kamala Das has always refrained from defining herself as a feminist. Was it because she wanted her poetry to be much more than a crusade? We can only wonder!

About the Author : A wanderer at heart, Vibhuthi is the author of Rainbow, an anthology of poems that was published in 2009 by Nishaganti Publication.

PaperPlanes#15 – The Poetry of C

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To grow a Texas cactus from the start,
You scatter tiny seeds on dirt and sand
(Your nail works well to nudge stuck ones apart).
Then sprinkle water with a steady hand.
Each day, my son asks, “Will it get real tall?”
He crowds his brother as they check for growth—
The way I’ve searched my hairless head since fall.
I pray young shoots will sprout up soon for both.
It happens all at once — soft spikes appear;
I rub my scalp while calling to the boys.
They peer in close to analyze each spear.
My bigger joy is lost to hooting noise.
The victory is all my own: Mom’s hair?
The news is that we grew a Prickly Pear.

Inspired by the cactus she brought from Texas for her sons to grow, Kyle Potvin wrote the poem ‘The New Normal’ about her experience with Cancer.

Poetry has two epicenters. One is located at a place where the poet has understood the world too well too quick. The second one is positioned where the poet is tired of trying and failing to comprehend the ways of this world. The question is – does it help? Is it capable of healing the wounds for good or does it just provide a momentary catharsis and the ancient suffering takes a modern form? What importance does a momentary catharsis play in a life that is being constantly seen by distant people with a sense of despair but a poetic hope by people on the inner arc? Does it make another day easier to live? Maybe it does. Otherwise, why would someone write this –

I come-to wearily, conscious of the slight ache in my shoulder.
I hold the kettle under the cold tap, one foot on the other on the chilly lino.

I watch the sheep from the kitchen window while I wait for the kettle to click off.
They are nibbling the hedge. I don’t know what attracts them. It looks bare to me.

I take my cereal and tea back to bed and arrange my two duvets, my hat and my scarf.
I am lucky to have an appetite.

Once I’ve drunk my tea I’ll have a cup of water then clean my teeth, have a salt-water rinse and try and chase some more sleep.

Despite it being a bright, sunny day out there, sometimes you just can’t find the will to live each day as if it were your last

(Chemo in winter/ Everyday life.)

Can poetry speak to the cells of cancer? When winds blow against the sails of today, can poetry, impregnated with our tomorrow, carry us through to the other side? Is cancer willing to understand what it means to be alive and why the human spirit never gives up its fight to breathe? Someday, can cancer realize that its host’s body is predisposed towards life? Can cancer be made to see how purposelessly it feeds on this world? In effecting all of these, can poetry play a role, a supporting one at the least?

I was pondering over the role of poetry in the fight against cancer. I looked around and I wasn’t alone!

I gaze at your face now,
Irish and watery eyed with fear and mirth.
There’s a line under your eye
that you didn’t have before…and soft red marks on your hands.

Prize fighter.
Fight dirty and grab it by its dark balls, or
if it happens to be a lady,
dig your nails in and pull out her hair. All’s fair.

(Prize fighter)

It does help that you can express your feelings about what you are going through. However, can a poet tell all that he feels? Did we ever have such a poet in the history of poetry? Language is too feeble a medium. That feeling which travels from your gut to the heart’s vessels to the canals of your brain and egresses out as saline something from the shores of your eyes can not be translated into any language. Do I wish that it could be? On days when a 17 year old boy knows all that is happening inside the body of his 37 year old mother, at least those unworded, shapeless emotions should be left to remain private.

What about the part that is voiced in a cancer poet’s words? For me, that expression is vital. A poet by his wont only exposes the portion that he understands can take the flights of expression and that right he has. He has the right to expose only the tip of the iceberg. A sensitive seagull can still perch on it and songs of hope can still be sung atop the numbing tip.

Passages to strength
Come in many forms and lengths,
Survival of the fittest,
The biggest
Lessons learned
Appear only when earned,
When fate turns
Its back on you,
Misconstrued,
Subdued
With questions of how and why,
Will I die?
How many tears am I able to cry?
The inquiries never seem to subside,
Outside,
I am a warrior-Braveheart if you will,
Yet within the walls of my ivory skin lies a disease that will kill
At will
With no prejudice or bias,
Ready to guide us
To our Maker of life

Where there lies no strife,
Maybe finally a day of peace
The heartaches will cease,
But my soul tells me to get up and fight
It is not my time to go towards the light,
The flight
That is destined for me
Is to be
The leader of every community
To help them see
It is not about you or I – it is about we,
I will not be added to the list of the deceased

Time of death 12:43,
Any demon can be defeated
As long as in the Lord’s hands you are seated,

(sigh)

I AM HERE
And yet you have been gone for slightly over 2 years,
And it’s amazing how my smiles take the place of those tears,
I now hope…instead of fear
And I pray that my message to all is crystal clear,
I stared Cancer right in the face
Not with anger but with womanly grace
And told it to get the hell out of this place!!!!!

(Cancer Slayer, Sabrina Esposito, Vero Beach, Florida)

Sources –
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/the-poetry-of-cancer/
http://www.keep-healthy.com/poems-about-cancer/
http://www.cancernet.co.uk/poems.htm

PaperPlanes#12 – Let me sing you a little song

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Sonetto, meaning little song had its birth in Italy at the hands of Giacomo da Lentini. It was not long before it entered English shores with Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard. As with all poetic forms, the time has twirled and nicked this form here and there. Traditionally dealing with the theme of love, sonnets offered poets or sonneteers as they are referred to in this case, a vehicle to carry, ruminate and find a resolution to their dilemmas. Continue reading “PaperPlanes#12 – Let me sing you a little song” →

From Ideas to Iconic Brands – Giles Lury

Abhishek JhaLeave a comment

Giles says at the end of his book -“… This book was never meant to complete with them or play that role; rather I wanted to tell stories. I wanted to complement those other books….”

Giles claims to have written a storybook and not a textbook, he succeeds in that attempt and makes you go through the stories of 101 brands in the most lucid manner. With the brands that have been successful, he has also added stories of brands who got it wrong and sunk into oblivion, and this has, to the benefit of the author, imparted contrasting hues to his work.

I liked reading these stories and I would certainly recommend it to people around me instead of letting them dig the entire web without direction. However, I see a particular pattern emerging out that worries me as a writer as well as a reader. As with the startup scene, are we seeing an aggregation age in book publishing too where a collection of x items is turned into a book without caring for an often cited term ‘creativity’, of the author’s mind? I hope that the publishers recognize the sincere from the lazy and do not overdo the business part in this complex Creativity-Business equation. Most of all, I hope this book doesn’t fall on the shelf that is meant to mint money at the expense of originality.

Giles Lury has written a book From Ideas to Iconic Brands. He is the Executive Chairman of The Value Engineers, a leading marketing and advertising agency. The book is published by Jaico. Giles Lury has an affable way of writing and keeps you with him from first page to the last. Push in one addendum that most of the brand stories in the book can be found on the web, his work gains a more difficult skin – what difference has he made to the stories already out there while bringing them down in his book?

I would add two more things to Giles’ note at the end of the book about his purpose – Context and Objective. The writer tacitly adds a context to each of the story he tells and has an objective, a motivation in his head to tell a story when he tells it. This makes it easier for the readers to take what they would usually take from the book and also receive an extra message on writer’s own conclusions to the stories. By the time I reached the other end of his book, I felt I had more wherewithal with me to use at work and life as compared to when I started reading it.

PaperPlanes#11 – It’s Poetry. Period.

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Last year, I was in a village in Gujarat, trying to understand about menstrual hygiene among rural women. It was fascinating that the topic of menstruation brought a lot of laughter among them, Clearly, they were ashamed to talk about the hush topic which was apparently dirty and unhygienic. It didn’t matter that I was also a woman and went through the same cycle. Continue reading “PaperPlanes#11 – It’s Poetry. Period.” →

PaperPlanes#10 – Adonaïs

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Imagine a man whose list of admirers reads like this:

  • poets and writers of the order of Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock, Mary Shelley, Keats, Robert Browning and Thomas Hardy
  • social activists, no less than Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr,
  • intellectual giants on the scale of Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, WB Yeats and Aldous Huxley

Continue reading “PaperPlanes#10 – Adonaïs” →