On Imagination

But what is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of reason.

ATTRIBUTION:Ralph Waldo Emerson

When upon a Stumbling Block

When a stumbling block drops
With a thud on your path
You may look back
And rue the false start.

Or you may brainstorm
To make it go away.
It finally will
And you walk on your way.

Stumbling blocks drop for a reason. They do not mean to stop you. They mean you to reassess.

I faced one yesterday. It made apparent to me one basic flaw that most of what I've written for my book till now has. For most of yesterday, I felt low, riddled with doubt, that maybe my idea was not so 'great' or 'unique' or 'important' after all. Even then, I knew that this mood did not mean 'giving up', that it was just my immediate reaction to a very important feedback on my idea, and that the faith would reassert.

It has, but now I can see that the project is bigger and grander than I was thinking it to be! And, to live up to its scope, I will have to work very very hard.

It's going to be an educational roller coaster henceforth. Ahead are the months of Intense Study and Hard Work. I will not be getting a degree for it, but my dream of being a researcher is going to be fulfilled.

This book will bring to fruition all these aspects of mine- the writer, the dreamer, the ideator, the researcher, the psychologist. It's going to enrich me. Immensely. It's an ideal first book!

Defining Poetry

Poetry is nothing but the right words in the right order. :-)

On 'What is Literature...'

I've found my answer to 'What Is Literature and what is not':

If it's a compromise, it's not literature.

The Tolstoy Farm of Gandhi

I was pondering today about what kind of education would actually work for the poor.

One of the ideas that I came across was of The Tolstoy Farm that Gandhi had founded in South Africa. It was a precursor of the Sabarmati Ashram he set up upon his return to India. Read about how the young members of the farm were educated- in Gandhi's own words.

Also read: Page 139 of this e-book.

This is a TIME article dated 5th Sep, 1938 (!!!), about the Wardha Education Scheme propagated by Gandhi.

and, this one dated 8th Oct, 2008 (back to our times :))

Here is a detailed analysis of the Wardha scheme.

As for my own analysis, wait for some time :-)

Education & poverty

Republished from The Hindu Online

"Education is not a way to escape poverty — it is a way of fighting it.''

— Julius Nyerere, former President of the United Republic of Tanzania

POVERTY IS much more complex than simply income deprivation. Poverty entails lack of empowerment, lack of knowledge and lack of opportunity as well as lack of income and capital. Despite increased access to education, the poor — disproportionately women, socially disadvantageous groups, the physically disabled, persons in remote regions — are often deprived of a basic education. And when basic education is available, the poorest are unable to avail of it because the direct and opportunity costs attached to it are quite high for them.

Poverty is thus both a cause and an effect of insufficient access to or completion of quality education. Children of poor families are less likely to enrol in and complete schooling because of the associated costs of attending school even when it is provided "free''. The cost of uniforms, supplies and transportation may well be beyond the means of a poor family, especially when the family has several children of school age. This means that choices have to be made, and the choice is often to drop out of school or, worse yet, to deny schooling to girls while enrolling the boys thereby contributing directly to maintaining the inferior status of women. And as poor children who are enrolled grow older, the opportunity cost (their lost labour and the forgone income it may entail) becomes greater, thus increasing the likelihood of abandoning school.

Furthermore, dropping out of school because of poverty virtually guarantees perpetuation of the poverty cycle since the income-earning potential of the child is reduced, not to mention overall productivity, receptivity to change, and capacity to improve quality of life. Lack of education perpetuates poverty, and poverty constrains access to schooling. Eliminating poverty requires providing access to quality education.

The relationship between education and poverty reduction is thus quite straight and linear as education is empowering; it enables the person to participate in the development process; it inculcates the knowledge and skills needed to improve the income earning potential and in turn the quality of life. Moreover, education of girls and women helps in improving the number of other indicators of human development.

Education thus helps to lay the foundation for the following pillars of poverty reduction:

Empowerment, human development, social development and good governance.

Basic education empowers individuals as:

* It opens up avenues of communication that would otherwise be closed, expands personal choice and control over one's environment, and is necessary for the acquisition of many other skills.

* It gives people access to information through both print and electronic media, equips them to cope better with work and family responsibilities, and changes the image they have of themselves.

* It strengthens their self-confidence to participate in community affairs and influence political issues.

* It gives disadvantaged people the tools they need to move from exclusion to full participation in their society.

* It empowers entire nations because educated citizens and workers have the skills to make democratic institutions function effectively, to meet the demands for a more sophisticated workforce, to work for a cleaner environment, and to meet their obligations as parents and citizens.

Social and economic gains

Investing in women's education results in substantial social and economic gains.

* Educated women have fewer children. In South Asia, women with no education have seven children on average; women with at least seven years of education have fewer than four children.

* Educated women have healthier children; in Africa, one out of five children dies before the age of five if the mother has no education; the probability is more than halved for children whose mothers have seven years of education. Educating women has a stronger positive effect on children's health than educating men.

* Mothers are also much more closely involved in the immediate care of children and in the critical decisions about food, sanitation and general nurturing, all of which influence children's health and development. Longer spacing between births leads to healthier children.

* Education provides women with greater opportunities for employment and income, and raises the opportunity cost of their time in economic activities compared to child rearing. Such economic gains motivate families to have fewer children.

* The vicious cycle of high birth rates, high maternal and infant mortality and endemic poverty has been transformed into a virtuous circle through investment in human capital-enhancing labour productivity, reducing fertility and mortality, raising economic growth and thus securing domestic resources for further investments in people.

Social development

* Education is an important means of facilitating and directing social change. Children (and adults) who attend school are exposed to new ideas and concepts and attitudes that form part of the basis for social change.

* The socialisation obtained by attending school includes such values as punctuality, following instructions, managing time, planning work, focusing attention, adhering to rules and receptivity to new concepts, thus helping to develop persons better suited, function effectively in a changing society.

* Education also plays an important role in cultural transmission. Transmission of culture, appreciation of cultural heritage, understanding of national history, inculcation of cultural values are all increasingly left to the schooling process as traditional societies change.

Education is a powerful tool for introducing members of a society to the system of government and the concept of governance. The school curriculum always includes considerable attending to the essential ideas of nationhood and government and to the operation and structure of government. Participation by children in classroom committees and school government lays the foundation for participation as adults in local government. Educated persons are more likely to vote and participate in local and national government. They are more likely to demand better and more accountable government, thus creating demand for improved governance. Education is linked to empowerment, and a major manifestation of empowerment is the demand for better governance.

The continuing challenge for education is to ensure that all people have the knowledge and skills necessary for continuing human and economic development and for breaking the poverty cycle. The linear relationship between education, poverty and empowerment is, however, governed by the circumstances of a country and within a country in a particular region. Education, thus, influences and is influenced by the context in which it is developed. This synergistic relationship implies that education must be in a constant state of change as it responds to changing social and economic needs and that education in itself is a force for social and economic change as people become more empowered and more productive.

K. VENKATASUBRAMANIAN

Member, Planning Commission

I agree with the article. But what the author does not discuss, and indeed what I was actually searching for when I stumbled upon this article, was the way to ensure that education empowers the poor. Right now, it is clearly failing to do so. There are no good jobs unless and until you do a graduation and a post-graduation, and that is far out of the reach of the poor. So, in that case, what difference does it make if a child has studied till fourth or till sixth or till tenth? Why drag him till tenth, thus foregoing six years of his productivity, when he could actually have earned something and been on his own all that while?

It has to make 'sense' to the poor for them to send their child to the school and not the fields.

And that is missing, I think.

And, I think that the education system is partly to be blamed for it. It is solely based on 'learning by rote', and that is such a corruption of the mind and the intelligence really! It gives you the label of 'educated' despite giving you any ability whatsoever to think for yourself or to generate new ideas.

I am of the opinion that Education can truly empower the poor only if it is relevant to their immediate surroundings.

What I want to develop is a clear idea of how that can be done. Any ideas/examples anyone?

Read here: Gandhi's experiment on the issue.

The Indian Mythology and The Greek One

Washing my face in the basin, having just read the myth behind 'Cornucopia', I thought of exploring why the Greek mythology did not become a religious text, but the Hindu mythology did (not entirely though- the Panchtantra, and the Vikram-Baitaal stories too form a part of our mythology).

More on that later.

Meanwhile, read this bit of info about the Vikram-Baitaal stories:

"The Baital-Pachisi, or Twenty-five Tales of a Baital is the history of a huge Bat, Vampire, or Evil Spirit which inhabited and animated dead bodies. It is an old, and thoroughly Hindu, Legend composed in Sanskrit, and is the germ which culminated in the Arabian Nights, and which inspired the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius, Boccacio's "Decamerone," the "Pentamerone," and all that class of facetious fictitious literature.

The story turns chiefly on a great king named Vikram, the King Arthur of the East, who in pursuance of his promise to a Jogi or Magician, brings to him the Baital (Vampire), who is hanging on a tree. The difficulties King Vikram and his son have in bringing the Vampire into the presence of the Jogi are truly laughable; and on this thread is strung a series of Hindu fairy stories, which contain much interesting information on Indian customs and manners."

The stories can be read here.

And, giving that link gave me a thought about the importance of translation- if it were not for this painstaking art, so much of our cultural wealth (am talking at the world level, not just India) would be lost, or diminished!

From an Arvind Adiga interview

One thing at the heart of this novel, and in the heart of Balram as well, is the tension between loyalty to oneself and to one's family. Does this tension mirror a conflict specific to India, or do you think it's universal?

AA: The conflict may be more intense in India, because the family structure is stronger here than in, say, America, and loyalty to family is virtually a test of moral character. (So, "You were rude to your mother this morning" would be, morally, the equivalent of "You embezzled funds from the bank this morning.") The conflict is there, to some extent, everywhere.

The complete interview here.

GMAT being rigged!

I saw advertisements in the local newspapers seeking test-takers for GRE, GMAT and TOEFL, and offering handsome remuneration depending on the score. A score of 750 in GMAT would fetch a princely Rs 50,000!

I called the number given and asked the guy on the phone to explain how it was that they were paying people to take the test!

He asked my qualification, and perhaps convinced that I could be a potential test-taker, asked me if I had heard about scoretop.com (I hadn't). He explained broadly about what they did. I did not understand it fully then. But now, when I searched about scoretop.com, their modus operandi became clear.

The questions asked in the GMAT remain live for around a month, which means that if I have taken the test today, and you take it within a few days, chances are that some questions of my test will be repeated in yours.

What scoretop.com did was that it posted online the questions that the test-takers reported and sold them to those who were in the queue for the test. This way, test-taker No. 1 made money by 'selling' the questions, and Test-taker No. 2, who 'bought' those questions got a good score.

This scam was discovered however and the website was shut down.

The advertisements I saw in the newspaper today indicate an offline version of the same scheme.

Just iMAGine!

When change beckons

For me to see

And the haze clears

Without much decree

I just iMAGine

And it sets me free



Then dreams whisper

and ideas ignite

I see a new journey

An unexpected flight

I still iMAGine

But now I see light



And the day will come

When I'll have the key

When I really do realize, that

The MAGic was always me,

I will then iMAGine

And that's when I'll BE!



It doesn't really take much

Just the courage will do

You just gotta iMAGine

And orange could be blue!


So give another thought,

spare the other view

Cast your spell now, remember

The MAGic is always you!

Amita Kalra


'The Magboard' is now 'iMAGine'!

iMAGine is a group of students of the University Institute of Engineering and Technology (UIET), Panjab University, Chandigarh, and they are dedicated to create a dynamic platform for the city youth to express themselves.

See their new ambitious project HERE!

On Crowd Psychology

This is the wikipedia article.

Especially interesting- this paragraph:

"Edward Bernays, nephew of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, was considered the father of the field of public relations. Bernays was one of the first to attempt to manipulate public opinion using the psychology of the subconscious. He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he felt was irrational and dangerous."

E-book on crowd psychology: Here

An article to read on Vikram Seth

Here!
and,
Here

While reading about JMG Le Clezio

His fascination with other ways of life has led some critics to describe his work as "metaphysical fiction," a kind of questioning of traditional forms of being. "I have the feeling of being a very small item on this planet, and literature enables me to express that," he said. "If I had to venture into philosophy, I'd say I was a poor Rousseauist who hasn't really figured it out."

Crazy-sounding ideas come just like that...

I was reading Karan Bajaj's recommendations for reading, and I read this para about Ruskin Bond:

"He was so much of a role model for me in college (before IIM corrupted me with dreams of power and glory) that I went to meet him once unannounced at his house in Mussourie."

And, I had the sudden inspiration- why don't I do that too!!!

I was going to end the piece with a "Maybe I will" but that sounded lame and lacking of any will at all, but the idea has just come, so I cannot pretend to be very determined about it either, but it is exciting all right!

Maybe I WILL go and meet him. :)

Time Travel

What is 'Literature' and what is not?- Part 2

Follows: What is 'Literature' and what is not?- Part 1

But then...there is the case of Chetan Bhagat.

Chetan Bhagat wrote 'Five Point Someone.' I have many friends for whom it was the first novel they had ever read, and they thoroughly enjoyed it. It gave them the confidence that they too could read books! I myself had not been able to put it down till I had finished it, even though I had an exam a day later.

Yet, when I searched on him, I realized that his books are not regarded very well by the 'literature' folks. I culled the following lines from a NY Times write-up on him:

'Mr. Bhagat and his publisher, Kapish Mehra, of Rupa & Company, have an easy retort to the critics: the books sell.

“He is not a literary writer,” Mr. Mehra said. “But, more importantly, he is a successful and popular writer.”'

The writer and his publisher himself admit that he is not a literary writer, but a popular one, thus regarding the two as distinct and mutually exclusive categories.

Out of all the books that I've read in the last few months, the few that were genuine page-turners were 'Almost Single' and 'Devil wears Prada.'

Yet, both of these have been conveniently labeled off as 'Chick-Lit' and nudged to a corner.

A writer who has written just these kind of books is not considered great enough. A reader who reads just such books is not considered good enough. I want to know if that should be so.

Given below is a list of a few 'works of ideas'. Which one of these do you consider a part of 'Literature'?

1. Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat.
2. You Can Win by Shiv Khera.
3. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Dale Carnegie.
4. Chacha Chaudhary comics
5. Calvin and Hobbes
6. The Panchatantra Stories
7. The stories published in 'Champak', 'Nandan', 'Chandamama', 'Sarita' or other popular magazines.
8. The novels sold in bus-stands, railway stations and airports.
9. The Joke Books of Khushwant Singh
10. The poems of Wordsworth.
11. The film songs.
12. A play.
13. The script of a movie.

I am looking forward to your reply.

P.S. (Dated Oct 25, 2008): I've made my rule to discern what is literature and what is not.

What is 'Literature' and what is not?- Part 1

The latest issue of 'Outlook' is accompanied by a slim booklet on Tamil pulp fiction. It contains two translated-into-English stories, each written by a well-known writer of local pulp fiction, one of whom is said to have written 1200 novels and 20,000 short stories!

I read both stories with curiosity, because I knew that they sold, but were looked down upon by the academics and were not even regarded as 'literature', and I wanted to know why.

Well, one factor that 'cheapened' these stories (in my estimation) was that they made brazen attempts to titillate the readers. The women were used as props in both, as sex-objects, and the sexual imagination of the reader was actively stoked. They were not there because the story demanded it, but because the readers apparently did. 'Sex sells' and so, it was faithfully there in each story.

I think the distinguishing factor between Pulp Fiction and Literature could be the Intent. The former is written solely to sell, while the latter keeps that as a secondary objective.

This distinction is similar I think to the 'Commercial cinema' v/s 'The Art cinema' divide that the movies have.

And yet, there are enough popular writers/ directors whose work is accepted as a work of Art. Charles Dickens used to serialize most of his novels in newspapers. He would sometimes even pep up a particular novel that was not doing too well, by introducing dramatic sequences or altering the storyline he had thought for it. Yet, all of his novels are regarded as literature.

What Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in his time were only popular detective stories. But today, nobody has any doubts regarding the stature of Sherlock Holmes in the classic English literature.

Vikram Seth, Ruskin Bond and R.K. Narayan have written in a highly entertaining and easy-to-understand style. Yet, the tales they have woven are all high-quality literature.

So, I think that what we can conclude is that if you think the author is being true to his art, is not compromising it, or indulging in cheap sensationalism, if you sense that profit is not his main motive, then you respect him for it, and regard his work as 'literature'.

But then...

Read Further: What is 'Literature' and what is not?- Part 2

To have something you've never had

To have something you've never had, do something you've never done.