Bookstalkists @BlrLitFest2016

TheSeer TeamLeave a comment

BookStalkist attended the Bangalore Literature Festival held at the Royal Orchid Hotel. There were some hard choices to be made as at any point of time 3 sessions were running in parallel in different corners of the venue. We attended a few sessions and here is what we thought about them. 

Having It All: The New Indian Girl – Sudha Murty in conversation with Chetan Bhagat.

This session was surprisingly good. Mrs. Sudha Murty is a brilliant conversationalist and Mr. Chetan Bhagat had a lot of new things to say. We only hoped he gets to know the real salary structure of Infosys employees and stops overestimating their lifestyle.

Courage and Commitment – Anuja Chauhan in conversation with Margaret Alva.

This was the session that stood out for us for the eloquence of Margaret Alva. She spoke her heart out on issues ranging from women empowerment to male dominance in Indian politics to the current problems of the Congress party. She had a few interesting stories to tell about our ex-Prime Minister PV Narsimha Rao as well as our current one – Mr. Narendra Modi.

Askew: A Short Biography of Bangalore – Naresh Narasimhan, Prakash Belawadi, Prof. KE Radhakrishna, and V. Ravichandar with Vasanthi Hariprakash.

This was nostalgia celebration fest where participants reminisced the good old days of Bangalore. While a lot of blame was put on the IT industry for the current chaos in the city, it was perhaps forgotten that each of the guests had come to the city from outside in the 1960s. When a point is made that the city was only enough for the population of 1980-82, one wonders what if somebody from the 1940s would say that the city was good enough only for the population of the 1950s. We wonder if there is any end to this debate. In the end, everyone is an immigrant to this planet.

The Theatre Of Demonetization – Narendar Pani, Sanjeev Sanyal, and Shiv Vishvanath with Mihir Sharma.

This was a case of one-upmanship – everyone trying to put the other one down. In this rather superfluous discussion on Demonetization, the moderator came out victorious with his fine sense of humor. So much disconnected were the guests from the topic that Shiv compared the whole initiative to a bad b grade movie(bad sarcasm) and the one speaking for it – Sanjeev, thought that 500 and 1000 ‘dollars’ were banned. This session was nothing more than an exhibition of self obsession.

Literature And The Democratic Imagination: A Discussion of UR Ananthamurthy’s Bara – Prashant Keshavmurthy, Saikat Majumdar, Shankar Ramaswami and Shiv Visvanathan with Chandan Gowda

This was an academic discussion on the story Bara. Written by UR Ananthamurthy in Kannada, the story has been translated to English by Chandan Gowda who played the moderator to the discussion. It started on an insipid note but went on to become one of the most academically intensive sessions. Speakers highlighted different aspects and devices of storytelling in the book. Saikat Majumdar and Shiv Vishwanathan were the highlights of the session. While Saikat stressed on the debate between two schools of philosophy – one which says that you can’t talk about pain unless you have been through it, and the other that says that you standing at a vantage point gives you better clarity of the situation. Shiv has a habit of putting his co-panelists down and he didn’t fail to do so here either. This is unfortunate since he makes very cogent points to put across his ideas. He stressed on why sometimes misreading a book was important and cited examples of students who thought the book was about the JNU controversy.

Mukhamukham: Face To Face With Adoor – Amrit Gangar in conversation with Adoor Gopalakrishnan

This was according to me an ill treatment of the guest. Amrit Gangar didn’t show any patience to listen to his answers. We believe that it is anyone’s good fortune to get a chance to speak with such legends. The host interrupted and cut Adoor short on more than one occasion. On the the other hand, the guest was an idol of grace, patience, and experience.  There was a lot to learn from this session. The battle-hardened Adoor had a lot of stories to tell. One of them was how his crew used to spend all the money from one movie on another movie and in effect, never had any money to market the movies.

The Many Roles We Play – Ashok Chopra in conversation with Ashish Vidyarthi

We don’t want to write about this session. We admire Ashish as an actor but what we saw in the session was an attempt by an actor turned trainer marketing himself.

Standing On An Apple Box – Premila Paul in conversation with Aishwaryaa Rajnikanth Dhanush

We would lament the fact that most of the questions coming in to Aishwaryaa was about either her husband or her father. This, despite her having released her book – Standing On Apple Box.

What’s Cooking? The Future Of Indian Food – Antoine Lewis, Manu Chandra and Sanjeev Kapoor with Suresh Hinduja

A brilliant session where panelists discussed the millets movement, the myth of authentic recipe, recipe codification et al. Sanjeev Kapoor is a brilliant conversationalist and it was a treat to hear him speak.

Rajiv Gandhi: Chronicle Of A Death Foretold – Josy Joseph in conversation with Neena Gopal

This was one of the most interesting sessions of the festival where Neena Gopal kept the audience hooked with her insights into the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. Neena Gopal happens to be the last person to interview Mr. Gandhi and has recently released her book The Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi on the subject. She argues that the assassination of Mr. Gandhi could have been prevented and there was complicity at every level. This was an intriguing session and people were their attentive best.

Unending Sea Of Stories – MS Sriram in conversation with S Diwakar

MS Sriram and S Diwakar, both are on our To Be Read list now. It was an informative session where guest and the host spoke about why they had taken to short stories, the devices used, and how short stories more often than not cater to societal issues.

India: Reclaiming Our Civilization’s Heritage – T. V. Mohandas Pai in conversation with Rajiv Malhotra

Mr. Rajiv Malhotra is star wherever he goes. That’s because he knows his subject well and doesn’t care about political correctness. This session stood out because TV Mohandas Pai has his own enticing style of making a conversation. They appeared more as a pair of batsmen on the pitch. Rajiv was taking the strike and Mr. Pai was standing on the non-striker’s end. They had a common enemy, the so called left liberal intelligentsia of the country. Anecdotes of Mr. Rajiv Malhotra being censored and uninvited because of his political incorrectness were amusing on one hand but also worrying on the other.

Anything But Khamosh! – Ajay Mago and Bharathi Pradhan in conversation with Shatrughan Sinha

Our first reaction was – Shatrughan Sinha! Why? Then we realized that his biography ‘Anything but Khamosh’ was recently released and the book’s author Bharathi Pradhan was one of the moderators. Although we could not figure out what value Shatrughan Sinha brought to a literature festival, one could not but agree that he is a thorough entertainer. His sense of humor, comic timings, the famous dialogues from his movies, the occasional shayaris and mimicry of yesteryear stars Ajit and Rajkumar kept the evening alive. Mr. Sinha deftly avoided controversial questions regarding his party, politics and Mr. Bachchan.

 

Raat Ke Musafir – Piyush Mishra in concert

One of the most awaited events and especially when you get to watch Piyush Mishra perform from the first row, you can barely hide your excitement. He was one of the most interactive guests in the festival and performed his songs one after the other. While the crowd kept chanting Husna, he insisted to wait and kept Husna for the end. He also read a few poems of his. The evening couldn’t have concluded better. The audio issues during his performance did seem to disturb his plane of thoughts but his first loyalty lied with the enthusiastic crowd and hence he picked himself up every time and went ahead with the performance.

 
The festival covered history, politics, geography, biography, popular fiction, erotica, food, travel, evangelism, human rights and a lot more. As much as one might appreciate the range of subjects chosen for discussion, one might also get disappointed with the choice of panelists for those subjects. Except for a few sessions like the ones of Margaret Alva with Anuja Chauhan, Rajiv Malhotra with Mohandas Pai and a couple of other sessions, most of them seemed superfluous. What the fest achieved in variety, it lost in depth. Sometimes the panelists were not impressive and at times the moderators couldn’t get the best out of even veterans like Adoor Gopalakrishnan.

One trouble that probably people faced predominantly was the unavailability of food and drinking water. Although there were food stalls, the prices were not reasonable and the options not very healthy given that there were children too at the venue.  Despite certain inadequacies, the Bangalore Literature Festival was indeed a thorough celebration of literature and literature enthusiasts will always look forward to the event in the coming years as well.

 

Insulting the Quran!

Abhishek Jha1 Comment

While browsing through the books on my bookshelf last night, ‘The Quran’ published by the Salaam Centre, Bangalore landed in my hands. I believe that each book that we buy or read gets a memory shot tagged to it. When we come back to pick those books again in distant future, we invariably travel time. Same happened with this book. I had to travel only a year back – 2015, Bangalore Book Festival at Palace Grounds. One incredible experience that I had thought of penning down and for some reason, completely forgot; it has come to this day that I write about it.

Continue reading “Insulting the Quran!” →

To See Is To Believe?

Abhishek JhaLeave a comment

A circular was read out in the classroom. It had been decided by the school management that students from Std 8th – 10th would be taken on an educational tour to Calcutta. I was in 8th standard then. I was excited enough to convince my parents about the idea. I set my plans straight about the places I had to visit and spent the night taking a virtual tour of the city in my dreams.

Continue reading “To See Is To Believe?” →

A blunder of Poetry – Po’try

Abhishek Jha2 Comments

Bangalore got its own Poetry Festival this year. Considering the fact that the city has a strong and vibrant poetry community that thrives in the bookstores, cafes, and parks; a poetry festival was in fact due and perhaps should have even come earlier than now. The festival was liked by most of the attendants. I must most sincerely thank the organizers for such a Herculean effort.

There is one more thing that must be spoken about. A book was specially commissioned to be unveiled at the festival. Po’try was released as an anthology of poems that were shortlisted from the entries that were received in response to the poetry contest conducted as part of the festival. The entries were supposed to be in English, Hindi, or Kannada and required the number of lines to be more than 25.
As per the claim made by the publishers, some 300 poems were received out of which 159 were shortlisted to be published. The selected poets were asked to pay a sum of 1000 INR for 5 copies of the book. They were given a transaction code upon payment and were told to collect their copies after the unveiling of the book during the last session of Day-1 of the festival. 159 poets – 5 copies each, this amounts to a bare minimum of 795 copies of the book. However, the publisher company brought only about 50 copies to the festival. What followed reeked of complete absence of professionalism, humility, or any kind of empathy for the poets who had gathered to collect their copies. At this point, I must disclose the name of the publishing partner of the BPF 2016 – Raindrops Company headed by one Mr. Bernard Dsa. Though such a company must be ignored and not be given any kind of reading space on social media, I thought it prudent to write about the experience I had with them so that the people who are coming next are aware of the narcissism of the company. Rest of the evening of the festival was spent in remorseless series of selfies by the publisher while the poets stood by another poet who somehow had volunteered to keep 2 copies of the book on display so that people could come and get a photo clicked with the publisher holding their book.
Click. Done. Return the book. Next!

potry-1

I got hold of the book 2 weeks after I had forgotten about it. Though I was never much excited about my poem getting published in the book, it was still a good feeling to have the book in my hands. However, after having a glimpse of the inside pages, that feeling was short-lived. The book stands out for its shoddy editing, floundering the rules of the contest laid down by the organizers themselves, publishing same poem multiple number of times under different poets’s names and titles. Horrid editing will be an understatement. This book has not been edited at all. There are poems that are in Hindi but published in Roman script without any transliteration marks. In spite of all these blunders, the biggest irony of this book would be the strong-arming of the contributing poets to pay up 1000 INR in advance without giving them a control on the number of copies they wanted. Raindrops Company sent a sermon that the poets would need 5 copies each and hence they must pay 1000 INR in advance to receive those 5 copies. The company didn’t stop there. It wanted to spit in our face, so it priced the book at 180 INR on Amazon.

poetry-2

I still had sympathy for the poets who had landed up in the hands of such a terrible publisher and hence went on to read all the poems except 3 or 4 poems written in Kannada. Well, I found a silver lining. Please find below the list of 58 poems that I loved from the book. If you have already decided to not buy the book, try looking for the poets on facebook, they might be kind enough to share their published poems with you. Please note that this is not a ranked list.

  1. Hark! - Abhishek Kumar Singh
  2. Empty Piece of Paper Flutters Around - Dr. Aakash Dhruva
  3. Cracked & Splintered - Aishwarya Soni
  4. प्रतिबिंबित - Akanksha Bumb
  5. Distant Vespers - Amrendra Pandey
  6. I am Indeed - Ankit Mishra
  7. These Kindnesses - Ankush Banerjee
  8. पहाड़ और समंदर - Anshul Nagori
  9. Unfettered - Apoorva Viji Shivaram
  10. Aquarium - M. Ashitha
  11. Deathwish - Ashvani Sachdev
  12. Scatterbrain Syndrome - Avani Jain
  13. The Unchanted Souls - Dr. Debashish Sengupta
  14. She-An Unparalleled Work of Art - Debarati Saha
  15. वाद विवाद  - Gaurav B Gothi
  16. Antarctica - Gaurav Chauhan
  17. खून पतला हो चला  - Gaurav Tiwari
  18. Ice'scapades - Gayathri Rao
  19. Sun's Story -  Ilu
  20. प्रकृति हूँ मैं ही  - Jaya Srinivasan
  21. A Cuckoo Calls - Lovie D'sa
  22. Does a Bonsai Tree Dare Dream?  - Lynessa Coutto
  23. Theatre du Reve - Praveen Dhawan
  24. जन्मदिन  - Priyank Anand
  25. It was a Dream - Mahima Prasanna
  26. Bliss in solitude  - Mahua Sen
  27. Back Home  - Maitrayee
  28. Twilight - Mallika Bhaumik
  29. The Pendulum Heart - Mihika Shankar Shivni
  30. All Things Put Aside - Nishu Mathur
  31. Pacification - Nitish Nair
  32. The Impossibility of Us - Purnima Gopalakrishnan
  33. Sitting There - Rahul Raghunath
  34. कर्ण का धर्म   - Rajesh Joshi
  35. याद है सिर्फ  - Ranjana Tripathi
  36. A Trilogy of Musings - Rashmi Jejurikar
  37. Circling into the Center - Reshma Mudirakkal
  38. Us and Them - Rohit Nand
  39. Journey to You - Aimey Maggie Augustine
  40. Chikku Mara - Sandip Mondal
  41. No filter - Shachi Srivastava
  42. Death - Shruthi Vishwanath
  43. The Oracle - Shyni kp
  44. Meet - Srinivasacharya Darbhasayanam
  45. Disclaimer - Siddharth Shukla
  46. On My Grandmother - Sihi Nagathihalli
  47. A Disjointed Symphony - Simran Sethi
  48. Father  - Sindhu Verma
  49. The Earth you Fought - Soujanya K.
  50. Cry of Wicked Souls - Sarala Balachandran
  51. Saudade - Sreeparna Chattopadhyay
  52. Inheritance - Suganya Lakshmi
  53. थोड़ा और पकने दो - Tarundeep Kaur
  54. तलाश - विभूति/Vibhuti
  55. निशब्द - Vidya Krishna
  56. A gloomy rose - Vignesh
  57. H.O.M.E - Yamini Acharya
  58. Declarative Memory - Yumna Harisingh Jawa

This is not to suggest other poets were not good. Yes, there were a few who should have been more serious with their contributions but perhaps the publishers didn’t deserve better. Nevertheless, congratulations to every poet who has got published. Good Edit-Bad Edit – You are a published poet now and you have our best wishes.

Mandatory Disclosure – Writer’s poem was also published in the Anthology. 

पिलपिलाते हुए आम लोग।

Abhishek JhaLeave a comment

ज़िन्दगी है, ज़िन्दगी में मुलाकातें भी होती रहतीं हैं। मुलाकातें होतीं हैं तो बातें भी चल पड़तीं हैं। हम हिन्दुस्तानी राय रखने में ऐसे भी बड़े आगे हैं। राजनीति, क्रिकेट, मज़हब, चलचित्र- आप बस मुद्दा उठाइये और चार पाँच विशेषज्ञ तो आपको राह चलते मिल जाएंगे। पान थूकते, तम्बाकू चुनाते, ताश खेलते विशेषज्ञ से शायद पाठक का भी पाला पड़ा ही होगा। तेंदुलकर को किस बॉल पर क्या मारना चाहिए, ये मेरे कॉलोनी के गार्ड से बेहतर शायद ब्रैडमैन को भी ना मालूम हो।
पर मैं यहाँ उनकी बात नहीं करूँगा। मैं बात करूँगा आम आदमी की – तथाकथित आम आदमी। मेरे मत से तो आम आदमी कोई नहीं होता। आदमी होते हैं, औरतें होतीं हैं। गरीब आदमी, अमीर आदमी। गरीब औरत, अमीर औरत। आम तो उस फल का नाम है जो गरीब आदमी की नसीब में नहीं लिखा होता। अच्छा छोड़िये इन बातों को, अभी के लिए आम आदमी ही कह लीजिये। तो बात कुछ यूँ  हुई कि जहाँ कहीं भी गया आम लोगों के साथ ही रहा ।  आम आदमी जो अच्छे भी हैं, बुरे भी और फिर जो इन दोनों में से कुछ नहीं या फिर दोनों ही। इन सबने किसी ना किसी तरीके से कुछ ऐसा कहा है कि मैंने इनको याद रक्खा है। कुछेक आप भी पढ़ लें। कोई भी बात निर्णयात्मक नहीं है। मेरे ख्याल में ये बातें उन लोगों ने कहीं हैं जो अपने दिल से ईमानदार थे और इन्हें व्यवहार कुशलता की कोई चिंता नहीं थी। मानव सीमाओं से घिरा है, हम आप और सब। किसी की सीमाएँ नज़दीक तो किसी की काफी दूर। दार्शनिकों की बातें तो बहुत सुन लीं आपने, ज़रा ये भी सुनिए की तथाकथित आम आदमी क्या कहता है –

  • घर पर अपने दूधवाले से – “और महतो जी, किसको वोट करेंगे इस बार?”
    महतो जी – “और किसको देंगे सर, वही लालू जी।” 
    मैं – “पर वो तो भ्रष्टाचार में लिप्त हैं।” 
    महतो जी – “हाँ मगर जात अपना  है।”
  • 2007 विश्व कप – सौरव गांगुली टीम में वापस आ चुके थे। कलकत्ता के एक बस स्टैंड पर एक अख़बार वाले से –
    “क्या लगता है, कौन सी टीम जीतेगी?”
    अखबारवाला – “दादा सौ मारेगा आर इंडिया हारेगा।” 
    मैं – “ऐसा क्यों?”
    अखबारवाला – “एई होना चाहिए सर, गांगुली को टीम से बाहर कोरा था ई लोग, अभी सारा मैच हार जायेगा इंडिया पर अपना दादा सौ पर सौ मारेगा।”
  • मुम्बई के एक लोकल ट्रेन में उस यात्री से जो मुझे मेरी जगह से उठाना चाहता था –
    “क्या दिक्कत है?”
    यात्री – “कहाँ से हो? मराठी क्यों नहीं बोलते ?
  • नौकरी के पहले दिन मेरे रंग को ध्यान में रखते हुए एक टीम लीड का सवाल –
    “क्या तुम तमिल नाडु से ही हो?”
  • एक मित्र को चप्पल चोरी करने से रोकने पर –
    “अरे यार, तू बहुत सीरियस बन्दा है। कॉलेज में चलता है इतना कुछ, मेरी भी तो किसी ने ले ली ना। अब मैं नंगे पैर घूमूं?”
  • ट्रेन में सामने बैठे चचा जी –
    चचा – “बेटे, तुम्हारा आई आई टी में नहीं हुआ?”
  • एक मित्र जो कल शाम को बौद्धिक चर्चा में रामायण और महाभारत को स्त्री विरोधी और पुरुष प्रधान बता रहे थे, आज ऑफिस में  –
    “आपके पास अच्छी कार होगी तो लोगों को दिखाईएगा ना,  बिपाशा के बड़े बुब्बे हैं तो क्यों नहीं दिखाएगी?” 
    कुछ देर बाद
    “वो देखिये क्या गांड है, अरे देखिये तो सही, वो गयी।”
  • एक रूममेट (पुरुष) बलात्कार का कुछ दोष स्त्रियों को देते हुए –
    “तुम बोलो। कोई नंगी लड़की सामने खड़ी हो जायेगी, तुम उसके साथ कुछ नहीं करोगे?”
  • एक मित्र (स्त्री) ये जानकार कि मैंने सम्भोग(सेक्स) नहीं किया –
    “तो गर्लफ्रेंड क्या गार्डन घुमाने के लिए रक्खी थी?”
  • एक और मित्र मुस्लिमों के बारे में अपनी बेबाक राय रखते हुए –
    “पता है सर, जो उनकी हरक़त है, उनको काट देना ही एक समाधान है। नहीं तो आज न कल हमारे ऊपर चढ़ कर बैठ जायेंगे।”

हम आम लोग हैं। बहुत आम। इतने आम कि एक सड़ा हुआ आम हमसे ज़्यादा ख़ास होता है। आम लोग मज़ाकिया होते हैं, आम लोग सीरियस भी होते हैं। आम लोग ईमानदार होते हैं। आम लोग बेईमान भी होते हैं। सिर्फ आम होना कोई सर्टिफिकेट नहीं होता। हर आम आदमी ख़ास बनने की होड़ में लगा है। सारे पैंतरे ख़ास बनने के ही हैं। उन पैंतरों में हम वो सब करते हैं जो एक आम आदमी करता है या आम औरत करती है। क्यों न करें? जब तक ख़ास बन नहीं जाते तब तक तो आम ही हैं- सड़े हुए आम जिनको थोड़ा दबाते ही गूदा पिलपिला कर बाहर निकल आता है। हम पिलपिलाकर ही ख़ास बनेंगे।तो कोई आपके प्रदेश का न हो तो मार गिराइये, आपकी भाषा न बोले तो मार गिराइये, आपका मज़हब न माने तो मार गिराइये। बुब्बे मापिए, गांड झाँकिये, बलात्कार कीजिये और सदा पिलपिलाते रहिये। मेरी शुभकामनाएँ।

(Part 2) Books – The Used and the Abused!

Abhishek JhaLeave a comment

There is one particular incident that must be recounted here to make my point. One day, since I alighted from the bus at a stop which wasn’t exactly mine, I had to saunter till my residence through a stretch of road that I wasn’t familiar with. The stretch was eerily dark and quiet. After walking for some distance, I saw a minuscule, thatched hut to my left, and a lady standing outside calling out.


It took me a few seconds to realize that she was inviting me to have her. I wasn’t sure if she would have taken a refusal well, so I paced up and stopped only after attaining a safe distance. I could see lamp posts getting larger and shops appearing in sight. There was a used-book store that was selling books at Rs. 100 and 200 per kg. I had heard of this concept before but hadn’t seen books getting sold this way. Initially glad to have found such a store, I was left disillusioned once I checked the books. Most of them were run-of-the-mill books that people should avoid reading if they care for developing good taste. The only bright spots were the books on technical subjects but considering their weight, the deal was not very sweet. I wasn’t exactly looking for technical books either.

I had to decline both the offers – that of the sex-worker and of the bookstore. From whatever I could see of them and comprehend, both appeared battered. Both were unkempt, abused, marked, and scarred. Both were ordinary.

So what goes into deciding the prices for sex trade in squalid belts of a city and old books stacked upon each other under a rugged tent-house? I ask this not because I have complete understanding of these trades. I just have a fair idea about the value of presentation. A procurer (pimp) adds glitters, polishes, and qualifies the services and the prices shoot up. Another procurer (publisher) does the same with a book. For some people, I might have crossed a few lines here but a procurer is not necessarily an evil person unless he is indeed an evil person regardless of whether he is a pimp or a publisher. Books that got published some 100 years ago are getting re-branded, re-edited, reprinted and resold at higher prices than the previous editions. Does the same happen with escorts? Till a point in their lives when age doesn’t start showing, it does. As they grow in the trade, the prices go up. However, flesh trade is not an exception. This is the norm in any industry. It’s an age when the quality of every product or service is measured against the benchmark of porn. #foodporn #bookgasm #foodgasm #wordporn  – any acquaintances in those hashtags there?

At a subconscious level, think of a sex-worker you have had, met or seen while going through the following lines.


What happens to the books that can no longer afford a publisher? They are sold like potatoes and onions in a last ditch attempt at making some money. What happens to the books that we buy and are long done with? What happens to the books that at least outwardly have nothing more to offer to us? I was not sincere when I had suggested to my friend that I would be selling them all. However, if one must sell, I think a second hand book should be sold at a higher price than the new one. In fact, the older a book gets, the higher its price should be, at least till the time it becomes really old and unreadable. It’s not very difficult to understand the reasons.

An old book, by the time reaches your hands has already enriched a few other lives before you and it has already gained some experience in changing lives. That experience, you do not have in a first edition first print. A freshman might make mistakes, a first copy might not give you what you expect of it, but in the case of an old one – more often than not, you are in safe hands because you have reached the book either of your hunting accord or after recommendations from someone you trust, and if you find a few scribbled notes in the book – you are perhaps luckier than many, and undoubtedly luckier than the first edition snobs.

Getting a glimpse into another life or going through a live commentary while you read those rusty pages is a priceless experience. Priceless things usually get sold at ambitiously steep prices. Hence, used books deserve better prices, abused books and you will find plenty of them – deserve our respect for having taken the blows of an untrained pretentious reader. In either case, I would choose to either go the capitalist way and sell them at higher prices than they were purchased or invoke my socialist side and give them away for free. The second option, would have to meet with great resistance from my faithfully capitalist enchantress bookshelf. The first one sounds more viable. I hope the world is ready when I sincerely mean to sell them. 

The essay  Books – The Used and the Abused! concludes with this part. Read the first part of the article here.

Books – The Used and the Abused!

Abhishek Jha17 Comments

Barely a minute after the gift books had reached the recipients, I got an email from Junglee, an Amazon subsidiary, saying something to the effect of – ‘Now that you have bought books from amazon, how about selling some on Junglee?’ Though this was a routine pitch, it got me into wondering about a lot of things of recent past. Just a day earlier I had told a friend in jest that I was going to sell all my books, take note – it was not a serious statement!

I don’t own a lot of things. My friends who know me well are completely sick of my wardrobe and at times have to take me hostage to get me to buy stuffs. This is not because I am on some money-saving mission, I don’t save either. So where does the money go? I don’t claim to have some sort of library for myself, but I have a respectable number of books with me and the number increases at a staggering rate. In fact, our Government could define BPL (Below Poverty Line) mark by just contrasting between my wardrobe and the bookshelf.  Rich gets richer, the poor gets poorer.

Capitalism-Socialism-Communism all sleep in the same bed here. I had read somewhere that the day you own more than single pair of clothes to cover yourself, you cease to be a communist. Now, most of the present day communists would certainly fail this test in today’s age and I don’t blame them. The condition itself is too stringent and suffocating. However, if for a few considerations, I am allowed to take it as the benchmark, then the beggar who just had a garbage box to comfort his spine in and almost no rag on his body,  just outside my workplace in Chennai would perhaps make the greatest Communist on earth. Marx and Lenin would miserably fail this test. Taking heart from this, my wardrobe stands a much better chance to be regarded as at least a reluctant communist, reluctant because perhaps it wants to get a few more clothes for itself, but its master is lazy as a dead bone in such matters. This opens up two new ways to become a communist –

1. Have a very bad master!
2. Become lazy, lazy like a dead bone.

Sitting on an antipodal citadel, my bookshelf is a shelf-ish enchantress. If there ever was a true capitalist, it is her. The master is possessed by her beauty and she makes him do all that she desires. When much of what the master earns goes into her wishes and fancies every month, it is not very difficult to understand how enslaved and smitten by her the master is!

There is no end to her desires. I have never left my bookshelf alone, but perhaps on one occasion when I was moving to a new city and all her possessions had to be transported beforehand. For about a month, I couldn’t see her due to delays in courier service. That was the only time we were separated. A thing to note here is that this Capitalist monster owns a lot of anti-communism books, and since sits just beside my reluctantly communist wardrobe, leaves no opportunity to jeer at him and show him how communism failed the day master’s friends bought him a second pair of clothes. I can’t tell you any method here to become a capitalist. It can’t be done. Capitalize is a verb, but capitalism is a noun. So, you might think you can capitalize to become a Capitalist but Capitalize in turn depends on some noun, say in this case – situation! That situation comes by itself, you just have to be greedy enough. Like I said, the day you work your ass off for another pair of clothes in your wardrobe, you have embarked yourself onto the voyage of Capitalism.

To let myself wander for some more time, I would want to touch upon capitalism in books-industry and what’s going wrong there. I remember my boyhood days when books containing spiritual or religious messages used to be distributed for free and if I talk particularly about a few organizations, they used to encourage their first readers to pass on the books to somebody who hadn’t read them and continue the relay so that someday in distant future, entire planet would know about these organizations. Backed up by huge grants and charity money, this was their way of marketing. To be candid about it, I used to collect all of them just to sniff the fresh-from-print pages. Not that I didn’t try reading them but failed to make any sense of the content matter then. Interestingly, many customers stood benefited as even if they never opened these books, never turned over a single page; they could always keep them on their study tables and shelves to show off.

This still continues with the Quran and the Bible. You get them for free most of the times and the people who throng on the stores to get these books for free, generally don’t belong to Islam or Christianity. However once they rack up these books in their house, it helps to prove their broad-mindedness and establish a secular image to their guests without having read a word. That notwithstanding, let us think from the perspective of an involved reader. For him, these socio-religious books still come at nominal costs. Additionally, most of the dedicated readers share these books on their own after having read them. While he can get a Bible or a Quran, or a Gita for almost nothing, Das Kapital will cost him somewhere between Rs 500 to Rs 1500 on Amazon.

The socio-religious book segment is more communist than the segment that sells the works of Karl Marx. Marx would perhaps say today – ‘Socio-religious book is the new opiate of the masses!’
Think of all the socio-religious books as public owned and the fact that anyone can read them easily, re-interpret, comment, criticize, and burn them amidst a few fatwas from selected communities – not very difficult to fathom! Unwittingly and ironically, the bible of communism can’t be bought by the segment of the society that needs to read it more than anyone else. They have to be content with mind-numbing tall tales of leaders and impostors, not that the leaders and impostors have much of a difference in today’s age.

The article continues in its second part.

The Hindu! Take a bow!

Abhishek JhaLeave a comment

Positivity! Where art thou? Hope! Where art thou?

The country is debating Mr. Aamir Khan’s statements at ‘Ramnath Goenka Awards for Excellence in Journalism’. Irrespective of our political leanings, I am sure most of us would agree with at least one part of his statement where he says something to the effect of – “We are afraid to open the newspapers every day”  Indeed, we are!   Continue reading “The Hindu! Take a bow!” →