Against the Tide

How parents balance work and family

2011-06-26T16:46:00.004+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

FOR THE LAST two-three years, many of my female (and a few of my male) students, who have got married and have small children, are asking the question most parents face: How does a parent balance work and family?

As a parent, what do you think about balancing work and family?

I am asking some of my female (and male) friends, colleagues and students to share their experiences. This is an exploratory exercise, to test out the waters, hoping not to get my fingers bitten off.

If you are one of my friends or colleagues, what do you think of your solution to balancing work and family? How has it worked out for your children and for yourself? If you are one of my unmarried students, would you like to share how your parents balanced work and family?

To start the ball rolling, I asked one of my closest friends and colleagues, Gita Iyengar (nee Gopalakrishnan), to share her views and experiences.

Gita and I know each other from 1970, when we were National Science Talent scholars and we have been meeting each other, off and on, for the last 41 years. The principal of a school in Hyderabad, she has written 7 books, mostly for children. “Anyone Can Write” (Foundation Press, Hyderabad, 170 pages, Rs.195) written with Cheryl Rao and Meena Murdeshwar, guides children on how to write poems, features and stories.

I admire her simple and direct style, which has an elegant flow. Above all, I value her fiercely frank opinions.

------------------------------------

By Gita Iyengar (nee Gopalakrishnan)

WHEN MY FIRST child came along, I was working, and got the usual three months of maternity leave. I decided to wait and watch for some time how things would work. When I went back to work, my mother-in-law came to look after the baby. But that was strictly during the time I was at work.

I remember getting the cooking for the day done, getting my son bathed and fed before rushing off to work. The moment I entered the house again, I was back looking after the baby and the house again. So the first few months showed me how over-extended I was going to be.

My son also had an umbilical hernia, which needed surgery when he was 10 months old. So at that time, I tendered my resignation. But the management of the organisation took the trouble to talk to me and suggested that I just go on leave and think about it for some time. Six months later, I went back and confirmed that I wanted to let go my job.

*****

AT THE TIME, we were able to manage our expenses without too much of a hassle, as ours was a simple life style. I had plenty to do, so I didn't miss my job on that count either. The occasional question about what I was “doing”' didn't trouble me much. Besides, fewer women were working then, so most people around me accepted my choice. My husband hadn't particularly wanted me to stop working, but he did not at that time make an issue of it.

For myself, I enjoyed being with my first-born, and then with the second one, who came along a couple of years later. I think I was able to be relaxed and look after them, read to them, play with them, take them out to the park, and teach them many things along the way in the first few years. They were active children, and my elder son especially had to be kept out of mischief. I think being around them made it less stressful.

They were both sent to play school when they were about 18 months old. For the elder one, it was in anticipation of the arrival of the second child. Since it worked well in making him happily engaged and less dependent, I did that with the second one as well.

When my elder son was four, and the younger one two, I started on my Master’s degree. About that time, we started running a small dairy farm, and I was taking care of the distribution and billing. I did short-term stints at my children's schools as well. I followed that up by getting my degree in education.

I had also started doing some free-lance writing. I got back to regular work, outside of the home, when my sons were twelve and ten. During some of those years, it was free-lance work. It gave me the advantage of flexibility in timing. However, when assignments came in at the same time, I found I was sometimes working on four different jobs! At such times, I was often at work at different time slots from 6.30 am to 8 pm!

Still, there is a lot to be said for free-lance work. I found it stimulating. It also gave me, over a period of eight to nine years, such a continuing choice of assignments that I really never felt any insecurity about ‘not having a permanent job’. In fact, I did pass up one or two opportunities for full-time work.

Eventually, when this offer to work as principal of a very good school came along, I took time to think it through, and then joined. I had to make the journey back to working in a very structured environment.

*****

I THINK THAT along the way I also sequentially built identities for myself, though that was certainly not the main thing I was trying to do.

During the years when there was loads of work to get through both at home and outside, I think I managed because of some of the following factors :-

a) As a youngster, I had been brought up to do a certain bit of work around the home, and to take pride in getting things done. I had also grown up watching my mother, prioritising jobs aloud. That training, and a positive attitude, helped me.

b) My health and energy levels were pretty good.

c) I am calm, have some commonsense, and believe in net surpluses, which may not be immediately visible!

d) My system of making sure my family had a good breakfast and dinner, nutritious food with some flexibility but not too many frills, seemed to work.

e) I started trusting my children early to manage their personal toilet and baths; to eat; to do their home work and so on; and also to help with setting the table, to put away things; to do a bit of shopping nearby; and to take the bus to school. I supervised some of this activity, some of the time, but didn't believe in fussing.

f) I believed in guiding my children, but letting them make their choices, with the responsibility to work it out.

g) In India, one does get domestic help, most of the time.

*****

I KNOW THAT I have not said anything about my husband or others sharing chores. To be frank, most of the chores were my responsibility. My mother-in-law would help me a bit with getting vegetables cut, or supervising the maid's work, or minding the children. My husband would sometimes keep the boys engaged, or supervise their getting ready for school. On some Sundays, he made breakfast. However, it would not have been possible to extend that to a system of sharing chores on a regular basis.

I think now that, on the whole, it has worked out all right. My two sons are capable and independent individuals, comfortable in their own skin. And I'm doing all right as well.

---------------------------------------------------

Now that Gita has had her say, do you feel comfortable sharing your own experiences and views? Please let me know -- either way.

Gita has written about 1,000 words. If you wish to make a small comment, please do so in the comments section at the end of this post. If you wish to write a longer piece, ie, more than 400 words, please send it to me by email at: sangatizuzay@gmail.com and I will upload it as a separate post.

Your support is my strength.

Peace and love,
- Joe.

Pune, India; Sunday, 26 June 2011.

Can you see me, waving at railway gate No.60?

2011-05-19T18:00:00.002+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

Trains form my earliest memories, since I was a child of four in 1955. Our mother used to say she felt we were ‘born on railway trains or platforms’! Our father was a railway man, all his working life. So, I spontaneously think of Life itself as a train journey.

Now, I see myself standing at railway gate No.60. Can you see me, waving at you?

This “60” piece has five starting points:

1. My auto-biographical sketch: “Along the line, at railway gate No. 58” on this blog.

2. My catching-up piece, “This is me, Joe Pinto, since 1967”, written as I was preparing for the 11-1-11 re-union of my Class of 1967 school-mates from the St Mary’s (SSC) High School, Mazagaon, Mumbai. (Read this piece on my source-blog, “Journey Unbegun”.)

3. The memoir of my mother, “Lessons my mother learned me”, in five parts on this blog.
(Read all five parts as one piece on “Journey Unbegun”

4. Addressing various issues, raised from time to time, by my students, in posts like “Rules of the Road” and other pieces, on this blog.

5. A birthday gift to one of my sincerest students, Gunjan Chaurasia, “When I was 27”. (Read the original piece here on “Journey Unbegun”.)

*****

"A man's memory is his own private literature." – Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

Looking back at my journey, how do I see myself, as I stand at railway gate No.60? This is how one of my caring gurus, Dr Devendra Agochiya, sums me up: “A journalist by profession, and a trainer by choice.” Also see my 5 Ws and 1 H, on the margins of this blog.

“Along the line, at railway gate No. 58” traces my efforts to reconcile myself with aging and retirement. Today at 60, maybe I will not stop working. But I no longer want to do, what I do not like to do. I am coming to terms with work, in a radically different way.

In my “58” piece, I recalled the seven main streams of influence in my life and paid tribute to my parents, teachers, students, friends and colleagues, who helped me to discover who I am.

Their single-most important contribution was to help me be myself:
- comfortable in my own skin;
- a one-eyed Joe, with my spectacles on my nose from the age of eight;
- with words as my friends and books as my lovers;
- walking ‘the road less travelled’ with a jhola on my shoulder; and
- placing people before profits and man (woman) before markets.

“To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance” – Oscar Wilde.

They learned me to love myself; love all the peoples of the world; make all the children of our world become my own children; love and care for my students passionately; be at peace with myself. They told me that I deserve to be myself; that I am the only beautiful person I fully own; so, I should not want or need to be someone else, no matter how desirable or successful.

*****

I can arrange my 60 years into nine periods:

1. 1951-61 My ‘lost childhood’: roaming like a gypsy, passing through railways
stations: Amla, Jabalpur, Nagpur, Solapur, Manmad.
2. 1961-71 In Mumbai: at school and college.
3. 1971-82 A break from my studies; living out of a jhola, a full-timer with
various NGOs in Village Maharashtra and Mumbai slums.
4. 1982-90 In Pune: married; working with Maharashtra Herald (MH);
start teaching in 1987 at University of Pune; in 1990 at SIMC.
5. 1990-93 Accompanying wife to Leeds, England, to take care of my 3 year-old daughter, while she did her PhD.
6. 1993-96 Working with a much-weakened MH; resign from MH.
7. 1996-2003 Setting up and working with the Corp Comm Dept at a private
company in Pune and editing ‘Mile Sur Mera Tumhara (MSMT)’.
8. 2003-04 Editor of Gomantak Times, Panaji, Goa.
9. 2004 >> In Pune: training at BJS since 2005; teaching at journalism courses.

Of my ‘lost childhood’ days (1951-61), my three years at the railway junction of Manmad (1958-61) were the most wonderful. What would I give for all the money in the world? A chance to meet my lost school-mates … when I was little in Manmad. I shall devote 10-15 posts to these three memorable years.

The first 10 years of my ‘lost childhood’ in the railway towns on the Central Railway and my 13 years, working at the Desk in Maharashtra Herald, Pune, have one word in common: ‘small’.

These two ‘small’ periods of my life have shaped my world-view: of the small as beautiful (but the big as ugly); the slow as steady (but the fast as fatal); the low as good (but the high as vulgar); the hot as Heaven (but the cold as Hell) and so on and so forth.

*****

I recall I left Manmad, for Mumbai, when they were building the bridge across the railway track; and just after Rexy, our beloved dog, had been mistakenly poisoned, despite having a legal dog collar.

Boarding school in St. Stanislaus, Bandra, during 1961-63 in standards VI-VII, was bleak. I have written about those lonely two years in the book, based on the five-part memoir of my mother on this blog.

The saving grace? For the first time, a teacher took over my life and longing and revealed to me the secret and magic world of words and books. This was Ms. Philomena D’Souza (nee Valladares), my English teacher. Where have all my great Goan gurus gone? Remind me to devote an entire future post to how I searched her out over 40 years and found her, and what she means to me -- today.

Boarding was also my initiation into football (as a right-outer) and hockey (as a left-outer, who could reverse-flick the ball to the top of the ‘D’) and to Don Camilo, the Catholic priest during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. (Later, I would add George Orwell, Christopher Caudwell and Martha Gellhorn to that red list.) The 1962 war with China appeared as “clippings” on the St Stanislaus notice-board.

Here in the boarding, in a big city school, a boy from ‘small’ places faced the big world of competition – marks and ranks – and came out right on top. (But this topper was not to last out long. By 1970, I had decided that the “rat race” was not for me.)

*****

I joined St Mary’s (SSC), Mazagaon, during 1963-67 in Stds 8 to 11. Here my love for English was nurtured as well as my interest in science and mathematics was aroused. I passed out in 1967, winning the Esso Prize as the best all-rounder.

I got my first pair of long pants to wear at the prize distribution ceremony and Vullu Uncle, one of my father’s cousins, who worked at Riyadh in Saudi Arabia during the 1960s, gave me my first wrist-watch, a Swiss Sowar Prima, as a present.

I finished my B.Sc. with Chemistry from St Xavier's College in October 1971. In December, the war broke out with Pakistan, resulting in the formation of Bangladesh.

By the end of my second period – in Mumbai, at school and college – I had won a National Science Talent scholarship and was on my way to a ‘promising’ career. But I had decided, on ideological grounds, that the competitive “rat race” was NOT for me.

My mother, who had always urged me to compete with myself, died in 1969. Looking back, I feel I took her death seriously and in a sub-conscious way decided to implement what she had been exhorting me to do. I am still coming to terms with my grief at her sudden death.

I have not had a single reason or occasion to regret the decision to drop out of the rat race. On the contrary, seeing the destitution of the poor caused by liberalisation, privatisation and globalization (LPG), I have felt re-assured that I was correct.

Today, I prefer to compete only with myself. So cooperation, team-work and peace pervades my work and teaching. I appeal to my students, friends and colleagues to stand against this tide and shun the greed, which is being encouraged both by government sell-outs and corporate profligacy.

“The world is too much with us.
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers.”

- William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

*****

Then, I took a break from my studies.

From 1973 to 1983, I worked as a full-time volunteer in Maharashtra with:
1. a rural development agency in some drought-prone villages (1973-77)
2. a science popularisation organisation (1978-83)
3. a trade union and a slum-dwellers organisation (1977-83).

This was the mass-activist period of my life, when many new things were revealed to me for the first time, bringing me close to the pain and sufferings of the common people, enabling me to look at life the way they did – sharing with compassion.

“Living is easy, with eyes closed.
Misunderstanding, everything you see.” – The Beatles.

During this period I learned the meaning of Gandhi’s talisman, one of the last notes left behind by him in 1948, expressing his deepest social thought:

"I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away."
- Source: Mahatma Gandhi [Last Phase, Vol. II (1958), P. 65].

The remaining part of this “60” piece is in the present tense, like in a diary or a letter, written as if I am telling my story, till 1978, to one of my sincerest students: “When I was 27 – a report to Gunjan”. I know that writing thus, is an illusion. For, I have the advantage of hindsight. I was not a journalist then; I entered mainstream journalism in 1983.

“We give but little, when we give of our possessions.
It is when we give of ourselves, that we truly give.”
- Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)

*****************************

I am 27 today, 5 March 1978.

The mynahs and sparrows are chirping under my window. The sun tries to warm me, but my heart is still as cold as the body of my mother, who died nine years ago in 1969.

The Emergency that began in June 1975 ended last year, but even now terrible stories are surfacing of political prisoners, who were brutally tortured by terrorists like Sanjay Gandhi and his goons, under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA). Some of them are my dear friends.

We too have suffered our share of miseries. The local leaders in Kasarpimpalgaon (taluka Pathardi, district Ahmednagar, Maharashtra), where we were doing drought relief work since 1973, got emboldened by the terror, unleashed during the Emergency. If it was not for a kind IAS officer, who tipped us off in time, we would have been also arrested.

So our adult literacy work is in a shambles, and abandoned. I can only console myself reading "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" and "Cultural Action for Freedom" by Paolo Friere, whose 'conscientisation' methodology we used in our classes. "Liberation theology" is a new subject for me now.

*****

Let me tell you a little bit about Vistas, the group we formed in 1973, to work in the villages, after we had passed out of St Xavier's College. We were nine or ten young people in our early 20s. As for me, I used to wear flowers in my hair, which I grew to my shoulders, inspired by the protest song, "When you're in San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair."

I failed in explaining to my father and help him to understand why his brilliant son, a first ranker, and a National Science Talent Scholar, one of only 350 from India in 1969, had chosen to drop out after finishing his B.Sc, and did not continue further studies like his classmates, especially his best friend, Spenta Wadia.

The drought of 1970-71 was one of the severest in the history of Maharashtra. Having stayed in a village for four years, I would not hesitate to call it a 'famine'.

Initially, we started with drought relief work, with 'Food for Work' programs, with maize, wheat and milk powder being provided by international funding agencies like Caritas, Casa, Lutheran World Relief, etc. Then we started supplying seeds and fertilisers through Afarm and Afpro. Later we worked with Oxfam on adult literacy and organising youth.

I was mainly inspired by the writings of John Holt, Ivan Illich, Frantz Fanon, Jean Paul Sartre, Will & Ariel Durant, Paolo Friere, etc. I was already influenced by Vatican II and Pope John XXIII, who spoke about Christians standing up for justice and peace as well as the liberation of the poor and the oppressed.

Among the many books that I took with me to the villages was a copy of the Communist Manifesto. But I only remember reading it for its excellent English and vivid description of bourgeois life; the social and revolutionary content having little impact on me.

We read the feminists like Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Germaine Greer. (Note: none of them burnt bras, a myth of the demonic media machine)

The songs of protest by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, moved us.
The names of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd were on our trembling lips. With the Beatles, we believed in: "Can't Buy Me Love." We took the slogan "Make Love, Not War" to our hearts and minds.

I was learning to speak Marathi from the illiterate natives, even as I taught them to read and write their mother-tongue.

When we formed Vistas in 1973, I was 22. The world was young and, for me, anything was possible. Still is, Gunjan. I was not afraid to stop my studies and go to the villages, where the poor lived. By now, I had decided, on ideological grounds, to get out of the rat race. A topper for years, I discarded competition and its connotation of war, welcoming cooperation among humans as the foundation of peace.

*****

The proclamation of the Emergency in June 1975 by Sonia Gandhi's mother-in-law, the dreadful Indira Gandhi, came as a shock to me. (In 1968, my first year of college, I had been thrilled by her nationalisation of banks and challenge to decaying Congress values.)

I remember we had taken the morning train from Bombay to Pune. When we reached Pune and saw the newspapers, some of them had blank patches on the front pages. The courageous editors left the columns blank, when the government censors objected. The name of Jayprakash Narayan was like a magic mantra.

Today in 1978, I am 27 and disillusioned. I went hopeful to the villages in 1973. Our raw idealism collapsed in the face of the brutal assault by Sanjay Gandhi. We realised we were soft boys and girls, pampered and spoiled in the cities. Within 20 months, the Emergency (June 1975 – January 1977) made us men and women.

Now my first taste of direct resistance and protest on the streets is in the form of the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR). I am working to set up a Centre for Education and Documentation (CED), which will set up a library of clippings for use by activists and journalists.

Three friends become journalists: Ivan Fera, Ayesha Kagal and Chaitanya Kalbag.

Yes, I am disillusioned, Gunjan. But I have not given up and succumbed to the temptations of a comfortable job. I am brave. I struggle and learn.

********************************

“We are all in the gutter.
But some of us are looking
… at the stars.”

- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900).

This first part of my “60” piece brings my story up to 1978, when I am 27. Let me outline the rest of my story, in brief, to be taken up in detail, as and when time permits.

After 1978, I joined trade union work and organising slum dwellers in Bhandup, Mumbai. Then, we formed the Lok Vidnyan Sanghatana for taking science to the people in 1980.

I got married to a Pune girl, Kalpana Joshi, on 26 January 1982. In the ardour of passion, I promised her, not the moon, but that I would stop smoking the day after we got married. She reminded me of my promise, and I stopped smoking. So this, inadvertently, became a wedding present to my wife.

Our only child and lovely daughter of our life, Pallavi, was born on 23 October 1987. Till her arrival, my late mother came first in my life, and my wife came second. Today, my daughter is at No. 1 position.

The mothers of my friends pass away, carrying away my long-lost mother into the history-books she loved so much.

*****

Meanwhile, full-time journalism had started in 1983. I started teaching journalism at the University of Pune in 1987, and at the Symbiosis Institute of Journalism and Communication (SIJC), now SIMC, in 1990.

Since 1983 to 1996, I worked with Maharashtra Herald, the one and only local English daily in Pune. I have begun a 20-part series on “the old MH” as a tribute to that most valiant of Indian local papers, sustained by the blood, sweat, toil and tears of working journalists.

During 1990-93, we were in Leeds, England, where my wife did her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering. I took three years leave without pay, to take care of our daughter, who was three years old then.

After 13 years in Maharashtra Herald, Pune, I left in 1996 and joined to set up the Corporate Communication Dept at Deepak Fertilisers. So, though I disliked it, I did internal PR for seven years. No choice: just a job. My only joyful consolation during those years is “Mile Sur Mera Tumhara (MSMT)”, a unique internal newsletter.

The date 2 September 2006, when I suffered a heart attack, I recall as the day I got a second chance.

Since 2005, I have been also doing some unusual work – designing, developing and delivering training programs – at Bharatiya Jain Sanghatana, founded by the pioneering Shantilal Muttha.

I continue to teach print journalism. But I am winding up my lectures and concentrating on writing: a memoir on my mother; a text-book on editing; survivor drafts of my cold & wet days in Leeds; and other scraps.

*****

When I went off my blog "to restore myself" I thought I would be back in three months. But it has taken me 19 months to come back. Not because it took me 19 months to restore myself, but because only the way, I developed other ways of keeping in touch with my sincerest students.

But the blog kept beckoning. And its charms, like a personal dairy, can only be appreciated by those who have roamed the adventures that Life offers the precious, the gentle and the brave.

I have inserted five appendices, to explain the sources and starting points for this piece. This is only for those who wish to go "inside the mind" of a writer and see how a piece takes shape.

*****

I have hundreds of journalism students since I started to teach in 1987; they are scattered across the world. A few of them (and I tell them so), I cherish as “my sincere and serious students”.

But as I said at railway gate No. 58, I still “await the student, who may exceed me, who may dare to go beyond imagination, against the tide; to whom I may entrust the torch given to me by my ancestors and teachers.”

Dare I say, during the last two years, I may have had fleeting glimpses of some such adventurous students? A hundred others are striving to be my students, just as I struggle, even today, to deserve to be the student of my teachers, some long gone to dream with Hemingway’s lions.

Your support is my strength.

Peace and love,
- Joe.

Pune, India, Wednesday, 19 May 2011.

"A man's memory is his own private literature." – Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

2011-05-19T17:49:00.004+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

In the five appendices below, I have explained at length the various sources and consciously identified the five starting points of origin for this “60” piece. The purpose behind inviting you to witness what is going on inside my mind is to reveal how story ideas keep bubbling and simmering – cooking – in the backyards of our memories.

Dip into your mind. And lo!! A story will leap out!!!

Appendix 1. My auto-sketch: “Along the line, at railway gate No. 58” on this blog.

Two years ago, when I turned 58, I posted, “Along the line, at railway gate No. 58” on this blog. How did that “58” piece get written? Kajal Iyer tagged me on Facebook, asking to know 25 random things about me. Normally, I am reticent, and dismiss such FB gimmicks as an invitation to gossip. Like the Marathi writer ‘G.A.’, I prefer to let my writing, editing and lectures tell. But I took part, just for fun, and wrote the FB note on 14 February 2009. (Read it here on my source blog, “Journey Unbegun”.)

Two weeks later, I was glad I had listened to Kajal and jotted down those 25 points. I went back to that random list, rearranged the sequence and used the resultant outline, as the pattern for a sketch of myself. The dramatic setting was to create an impression that I was standing at railway gate No. 58.

I enjoyed writing that “58” piece, hugely, pouring myself into it. And it, in turn, has triggered within me such diverse, contending story lines: much like “the hundred flowers that bloomed” in Mao’s China of 1957.

For the first time, I candidly shared a part of my past in public; a bit of me that my students did not know; even some of my relatives and close friends could not imagine. I pulled and ripped aside the veil, and became vulnerable. My “58” piece was appreciated.

This is the first starting point for this “60” piece.

*****

Appendix 2. My catching-up piece, “This is me, Joe Pinto, since 1967”.

Some of my school-mates, who passed the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) exams, ie, the old Standard XI, in 1967 from St. Mary’s (SSC) High School, Nesbit Road, Mazagaon, Mumbai, met at the Catholic Gymkhana in Mumbai on 11-1-11. Most of us were meeting one another after a gap of 44 years!!!

The re-union of the St. Mary’s Old BoyS (SMOBS) of 1967 was memorable. More than two-thirds of us smobs came with our wives. The rich diversity, of the communities we belonged to, was visible: Christians, Muslims (Bohras, Khojas, etc), Parsis, and Hindus. Most of our Class of 1967 is still in Mumbai; many are grand-fathers; some are settled in other parts of India (like me in Pune); and spread out across the globe: Canada, USA, Australia, Europe.

While preparing for that re-union, I found I was getting in touch again with most my class-mates for the first time -- since 1967. And so to fill out the gaps, I wrote for my mates a catching-up piece, “This is me, Joe Pinto, since 1967”, where I shared the five Ws and one H about myself, during 1967-2011. Read it here.

This got woven into this “60” piece as the second starting point.

*****

Appendix 3. The five-part memoir of my mother, “Lessons my mother learned me”.

On 2 October 2008, I started this blog, “Against the Tide”, as a platform, on which I could “think aloud” and from where I could reach out to my students – beyond the class-room. (I am including, after re-writing, much of the raw material from my blog as parts of a text-book on editing.)

Many of my sincerest students, some friends and colleagues, and all my relatives liked, “Along the line, at railway gate No. 58.” They appreciated what I revealed about my background and motivations. Their respect for ‘Joe Pinto’ grew, now that I allowed myself to become vulnerable. Some of my most honest students also wanted me to write about my mother.

I had had completed 18 years of age on 5 March 1969, when two months later my mother died – suddenly. The pain still thuds inside me. I had posted, “Along the line, at railway gate No. 58” on 4 March 2009. Since the 40th death anniversary of my mother on 2 May 2009 was approaching in two months, and for the sake of my dearest students, I decided to write a memoir of my mother.

The intense process of writing about my mother, in the form of a memoir, gripped me completely (taking me deep into my own tear-full recesses), and turned out to be a five-part series. Read it here. Now, with additional research material I am making that series into a book.

The tear-stained memoir of my mother is the third starting point for this “60” piece.

*****

Appendix 4. “Rules of the Road” and other pieces.

A bold few of my most perceptive students, the adventurous ones who have dared to take “the road less travelled”, noticed that I had unveiled, on my blog, a face and sides of “Pinto Sir”, which they could not have inferred from what they had seen of me in class.

I owe my students a lot of learning. So I felt they deserved to know more about my trials and tribulations as a young man; my experiences as a mass activist and full-time volunteer in various non-governmental organizations (NGOs); and as a journalist in Pune’s only local English daily newspaper – Maharashtra Herald (1963-2003).

My students, I felt, deserved to know about the social and political forces that had made me and my character. Then, they would be able to more fairly and fully appreciate and understand my lectures in class. I have tried to address some of these issues in “Rules of the road” and other pieces.

This is the fourth starting point for this “60” piece.

*****

Appendix 5. “When I was 27 – a report to Gunjan”, written as a birthday gift to her.

Gunjan Chaurasia, one of my closest students from SIMC, Pune, batch of 2004-06, completed 27 years on 5 April 2011. As a human being, Gunjan is one of the bravest and gentlest persons I know -- and learn from -- because she tastes deep and strong from the springs of life.

I promised Gunjan I would share my life with her, when I was 27, and send her a report as a birthday gift. Unlike my other pieces, which I re-write at least 10-15 times, I wrote this emotionally charged “27” piece in about 2-3 hours. Read it here.

Since I felt my other rare students also deserved to read this report, I marked this email to some other students too. Their thought-full replies encourage me to use parts of this “27” piece in my “60” piece. I also have Gunjan’s permission since, to start with, it was written only for her as a personal birthday gift.

A rare few of my students deserve the kind of gift I wrote for Gunjan. The difference is they did not ask me, “What was it like, Sir, when you were 27?” So the moral of this birthday gift is: “Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.”

This is the fifth starting point for this “60” piece.

*****

My daughter, J.K. Pallavi (23) is leaving soon for the US to pursue further studies. As a parting gift for her I am writing a piece, “When I was 23, were the young free?” I started to write this piece, intending to give it to her, as a birthday gift when she completed 23 years of age on 23 October 2010. But a father’s love knows no bounds, and the piece went on growing. Now hopefully, I will be forced to give it to her, since she is leaving soon.

In this piece, for the first time, I reflect upon the temptations before my own generation; how we faced them; and share my hopes and fears about the present generation and suggest some ways by which they may be able to resist the tide. For, this blog is about two things: struggle and resistance.

*****

Taken together, these five starting points, weave well together. Those who relish detail may want to go to the original pieces, for which I have provided links. I also use the occasion of my “60” piece” to open to the public my source blog, “Journey Unbegun”, on which I shall post original material, mainly written by me and published elsewhere, but also by a few chosen others.

Your support is my strength.
- Joe.

Pune, India, Thursday, 19 May 2011.

Away for three months, to restore myself

2009-11-02T11:47:00.008+05:30

My dear family, students, friends and colleagues,

You who follow my blog may have noticed that I have not been posting every Sunday, as I promised. For example, my last post was on 4 October, that is, four weeks ago.

A few of you have called or emailed to find out if I have been unwell. Thank you for your concern. I have not been posting regularly, because I have been pre-occupied with a personal assignment that takes a lot of my thinking time and energy.

Writing is strenuous. Moreover, since I expect that my own work be an example of what I preach and teach in class -– writing with nouns and verbs, NOT with adjectives and adverbs –- writing drains me.

But life in the blogosphere is even more tiring. When I started blogging on 2 October 2008, I found the Blogger software convenient. The template was easy to learn and use. And so I enjoyed myself. I still do.

But gradually, I got sucked into mediocre junk, the way children get seduced by fast food.

*****

In his 1959 revision of William Strunk’s Elements of Style, E.B. White added a Chapter V, “An Approach to Style” (with a list of 21 reminders). Reminder 9 says, “Do not affect a breezy manner.” Here, White refers to a poem, “Spontaneous me”, and argues that “in his innocence”, Walt Whitman, “let loose the hordes of uninspired scribblers” with their “uninhibited prose”.

When I read newspapers today, there is so much of breeze, wind and hot air, printed on their pages! No need to comment about the fluff and hype on TV.

For me, writing and reading as well as speaking and listening are two sides of the same coin: thinking. So blogging is not only about writing “Against the Tide”, but also about reading other blogs. And that seems to have taken a severe toll of my senses.

In my early exuberance, I read all the blogs as I strolled along, the way a child grabs at any toy within its ken. But I have realised I was straying into mediocre junk.

Sadder but wiser over the last year, I have decided to halt by the wayside. And slow down for the next three months. While I restore myself – with a personal assignment.

I shall, however, respond to ALL emails and messages on facebook. And like a street rag-picker, I shall scrounge through a few of your careful blogs, searching for …??? And when the urge takes hold of me, I shall post – but rarely.

Keep in touch. Resist the tide. Take care.

Your support is my strength.
- Joe.

Pune, India, Monday, 2 November 2009.

Journey of life: rules of the road – Part 2

2009-10-04T23:04:00.015+05:30

My dear family, students, friends and colleagues,

Learning how to edit, while working in great local newspapers like the ‘old’ Maharashtra Herald in Pune and while teaching students of print journalism for 23 years, has been a pleasure. And it is thrilling to discover books about writing and editing and re-writing, written by authors who are your soul-mates.

By now, most of my best students know how I admire and try to practise Strunk & White. The rules of ‘the little book’ have, for me, become the rules of the road on the journey called Life.

William Strunk (1869-1946) was the teacher of the famous writer E.B. White (1899-1985), associated with The New Yorker.

This is how E. B. White describes his encounter with ‘the little book’ ninety years ago: “At the close of the first World War, when I was a student at Cornell, I took a course called English 8. My professor was William Strunk, Jr. A textbook required for the course was a slim volume called The Elements of Style, whose author was the professor himself. The year was 1919. The book was known on the campus in those days as ‘the little book,’ with the stress on the word ‘little.’ It had been privately printed by the author.”

For the last 23 years since I began to teach editing in Pune, ‘the little book’ has been like a lighthouse, its declarative beacon guiding my waif of a ship among the ‘page 3’ wrecks and warning me of the celebrity icebergs, concealed in the treacherous waters of the free market.

Here I propose to take up Rule 17: “Omit needless words!”. These three words constitute my second rules of the road: travel simple on the journey of Life.

In the third edition, revised by E.B. White in 1979, Rule 17 goes across pages 23 to 25 in the section “Elementary Principles of Composition”. Allow me to quote from White again:

“ ‘Omit needless words!’ cries the author on page 23, and into that imperative Will Strunk really put his heart and soul. In the days when I was sitting in his class (1919), he omitted so many needless words, and omitted them so forcibly and with such eagerness and obvious relish, that he often seemed in the position of having short-changed himself – a man left with nothing more to say yet with time to fill, a radio prophet who had out-distanced the clock.

“Will Strunk got out of this predicament by a simple trick: he uttered every sentence three times. When he delivered his oration on brevity to the class, he leaned forward over his desk grasped his coat lapels in his hands, and, in a husky, conspiratorial voice, said, “Rule Seventeen. Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!’

“He was a memorable man, friendly and funny. Under the remembered sting of his kindly lash, I have been trying to omit needless words since 1919, and although there are still many words that cry for omission and the huge task will never be accomplished, it is exciting to me to reread the masterly Strunkian elaboration of this noble theme. It goes:

‘Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subject only in outline, but that every word tell.’

“There you have a short valuable essay on the nature and beauty of brevity – sixty-three words that could change the world …”

I may add, these 63 words on brevity could also slash the number of pages in our Indian newspapers by:
- trimming the number of paragraphs in our stories;
- reducing the number of sentences in the paragraphs;
- pruning the number of words from a sentence
- using words with fewer characters.

“Small is beautiful,” wrote E.F. Schumacher.

*****

I started to take lectures on editing at the Department of Journalism, University of Pune at the request of Kiran Thakur, then Bureau Chief at the United News of India (UNI) wire agency in Pune. Prof. P.N. Paranjpe, then Head of the Department (fondly called ‘Ranade Institute’) invited me teach the batch of 1987.

When the Symbiosis Institute of Journalism and Communication (SIJC) was set up in 1990, its Director Dr. Vishwas Mehendale asked me to take the classes in Editing. Anahita Rane, my student from Ranade was the deputy director then.

I had been searching for a suitable book to guide me. That is when I found ‘the little book’. Just as Strunk was White’s guru, ‘the little book’ became one of my gurus. You will find a photocopy of my personal copy of ‘the little book’ on the shelves of what became the Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communication (SIMC) in 1999.

I also came across “Basic Journalism” by Rangaswami Parthasarathy (Macmillan). Later, I added “Editing: a handbook for journalists” by T.J.S. George (Indian Institute of Mass Communication, 1989) to my ‘must’ list of three books for my students.

Hundreds of good teachers all over the world have recommended Strunk & White to their students. But only last week I discovered that another great teacher, William Zinsser, the author of On Writing Well, was in turn an admirer of White.

Looking up Zinsser on the Net, I found an article in the Spring 2009 issue of The American Scholar, entitled, “Visions and Revisions” in which he tells the story of how he updated his book On Writing Well over 35 years.

But it was this small paragraph towards the end that I wish to reproduce for it echoes Strunk and White and my second the rule of the road: travel simple. Zinsser recounts why his readers are grateful for the advice in his book and how it has changed their lives:

“(The hard part of writing isn’t the writing; it’s the thinking.) Now, they tell me, I’m at their side whenever they write, exhorting them to cut every word or phrase or sentence or paragraph that isn’t doing necessary work. That, finally, is the life-changing message of On Writing Well: simplify your language and thereby find your humanity.”

I hope each of you find this rule useful on the journey of life: “simplify your language and thereby find your humanity.” So you can see how Strunk’s Rule 17 (“Omit needless words!”) has been framed in special ways by different people.

Listen to how George Washington Carver (1864-1943) of the Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, USA, the great black scientist put it:

“It is not the style of clothes one wears,
Neither the kind of automobile one drives,
Nor the amount of money one has in the bank,
That counts. These mean nothing.
It is simply service that measures success.”

After "compassion for the poor", which I introduced in “Journey of life: rules of the road - Part 1”, here is my second rule for the road: “Omit needless words!” Keep it safe and take care.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, India, Sunday, 4th October 2009.

Lessons ‘the old MH’ learned me – Part 1

2009-09-23T23:29:00.016+05:30

My dear family, students, friends and colleagues,

Like the ordinary people whose heroic stories they tell and the peaceful places they belong to, local papers are charming. No big city paper can ever hope to (though it may pretend to) match the intimate way a small local paper grows up and on its readers.

I chose to work for 13 years in one such local paper, Maharashtra Herald (MH) – Pune’s very own local. Tuesday, 22 September marked the birthday of MH, founded by Abel David in 1962 as Poona Herald.

I salute you, my dear MH.

In this personal memoir, I will not try to write a history of ‘the old MH’ – before it was taken over in 2003. Far abler seniors – Harry David, Taher Shaikh and Y.V. Krishnamurthy – deserve to write the first pages. I shall tell a few stories, hoping to catch the feel of ‘the old MH’.

For me, two relics in Pune camp reveal that MH existed, once upon a time: first, the board of the Maharashtra Herald printing press on East Street; second, the location of its last office, above Nehru Memorial Hall and opposite Supriya, before ‘the old MH’ was taken over.

The silver jubilee edition of MH in 1987 includes a memoir by Dileep Padgaonkar called, “Salad days on East Street”, in which he writes of visiting the old MH office on East Street, hoping to bump into some of his old mates, who used to share that tiny space on the wooden floor, where he started his career in Poona Herald.

If I went there today, would I spot ‘the old MH’ office? East Street is become a stinking gutter, clogged with parked cars and choked by multi-storeyed buildings. Nothing on the ground – except the MH board – can evoke those days, which survive only in my mind’s eye.

“We are all in the gutter,” said Oscar Wilde, “But some of us are looking up … at the stars.” This memoir is dedicated to each of my colleagues at 'the old MH' who learned me to keep looking up.

My first full-time job as a journalist

While I was looking for a job, my wife’s friend, Vijay Lele, told me to meet Mr. S.D. Wagh, the editor of MH. Mr Wagh’s secretary, Duru Notani (later Tejwani) was the first person to welcome me to MH, at the top of the narrow staircase, outside the editor’s cabin. In the left-hand corner, a teleprinter rattled away.

After the interview, I asked Mr. Wagh about my working hours. “Twenty-four hours,” he said, trapping in three words the future of us journalists. (The 24x7 farce of ‘breaking news’ had not yet been concocted.) Thus began my first day in the profession of full-time journalism on 2 May 1983, as a sub-editor on a salary of 600 rupees per month.

(During my lecture a few days ago, I told my first-year students of journalism this story, to clearly convey the ‘24 hours’ attitude to work that is expected, if they want to become sincere, hard-working and alert journalists.)

Initiated into the taboos of the tribe of scribes by the silent Mathew Fernandes (one of the many Goan gurus who have learned me the lessons of life), I slowly stumbled across the subtleties of subbing. One by one, I met and grew to know, to love and be loved by, our three seniors – Taher, Murthy and Harry.

Since MH was the only English paper to be delivered at the doorstep and hit the stands, first thing in the morning, it was ‘the local paper’. (The Times of India and Indian Express used to come down to Pune by road from Bombay, late, in the afternoon.)

But the Yinglish snobs turned up their noses and looked down upon the evergreen ‘Cinema Calendar’ in the MH, where the matinees were devoured by college students. But everyone read the obituaries.

I worked ‘24 hours’ in MH from 1983 to 1996, being graciously granted ‘leave without pay’ during 1990-93, while I accompanied my wife, who studied abroad, to take care of our daughter J.K. Pallavi, who was then three years old.

Don’t give an opportunity to those who would wilfully distort your words

In Part 2 of this series, I shall describe who did what; where and when; why and how: the 5 Ws and one H at ‘the old MH’. Here I will take off from a Shashi Tharoor sentence that triggered this post: “I now realise I shouldn’t assume people will appreciate humour. And you shouldn’t give those who would wilfully distort your words an opportunity to do so.”

Tharoor is speaking about how Sonia sycophants like Jayanti Natarajan, disguised as Congress spokespersons, have wilfully distorted his “cattle class” tweet. Tharoor says you should not give humourless sycophants a stick and then not expect them to hit you with it. How I recall literally conjuring a stick out of my mind and giving it to a sycophant in ‘the old MH’ to beat me with it.

Our editor Mr. Wagh, a strict disciplinarian, used to write his editorials, longhand, in his cabin. My wild imagination converted him into a “waghoba” (tiger) in his den. ‘Wagh’ into ‘waghoba’. This nickname fell on the eager ears of a flatterer, who dutifully forwarded it to Mr Wagh.

One day, Mr Wagh called me into his cabin and asked me whether I called him “waghoba”. When I said yes, he smiled and said it was not proper for me to call him so, in front of others who may wilfully distort my words, implying that I thereby intended to disrespect the editor. I said I did not intend to hurt his feelings. And there the matter rested.

Till now … when the Tharoor tweet stirred a secret recess of my brain, while I was thinking out this tribute to ‘the old MH’. And out sprang a … ‘waghoba’.

*****

Any one who has worked in ‘the old MH’ may be asked, “What is the secret of the success of MH”? This is my answer: we borrowed a human recipe used by all parents who bring up their children: loving, caring and sharing; a sense of belonging.

The next post on “Journey of life: rules of the road – Part 2” will appear on or after Sunday, 4 October 2009.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, India, Wednesday, 23 September 2009.

Journey of life: rules of the road

2009-09-07T09:22:00.005+05:30

My dear family, students, friends and colleagues,

Describing life as a journey and asserting, “The journey is its own reward” are two common ways of seeing life.

For me these two ways are true, because travelling had been an integral part of my life till the age of 31, when I got married in 1982 and, for the first time, thought of settling down – in Pune. Moving from station to station with our father, a railwayman in the Signals & Telecom Department of the Central Railway, I had become a wanderer, a gypsy.

What are the rules of the road in the journey of life? The first and foremost is: the strong and the mighty shall protect the weak and defenceless.

While at Maharashtra Herald (MH) in Pune, I had the opportunity to interview ordinary as well as extra-ordinary persons, irrespective of their standing. But one extra-ordinary man whom I recall as ordinary and common is “S.M.”. These initials belong to one of Maharashtra’s greatest political leaders of the twentieth century, the late S.M. Joshi and the initials “S.M.” stand for: “Simple Man”.

For an MH photo-feature, with pictures by one of India’s finest photo-journalists D. Sanjay, we had interviewed “S.M.” during an entire day, travelling across the city to the places that were significant in his life.

Towards the end of our interview, I asked him, “Which was the one virtue he felt he lacked in himself but admired most in others?” The simple man replied, “Karuna”, using the Marathi word for “compassion”.

Compassion, above all, is the one human quality that is, for me, at the root of the first rule of the road in the journey of life: “The strong and the mighty shall protect the weak and defenceless”.

Glorifying greed; mocking the poor

Nowadays, this rule of the road must be underlined because the global free-marketeers, like the gamblers and smugglers and thieves of yore, inspired by the politics of Thatcher and Reagan, have glorified greed and mocked the poor, in the name of freedom for the individual and the market.

And though Prime Minister Manmohan Singh speaks of “inclusive” growth, I believe that is mere lip service to win votes, while his colleague Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, executes the brutal agenda of Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation; what I call LPG, the poisonous gas which will most surely destroy the weak and poor in India.

Some shocking indicators are the unacceptable number of infants who die every year and severe malnourishment among children in India. Among adults, look at the suicides among farmers and starvation deaths in villages, due to agrarian distress. You must find out the horror of the figures for yourselves.

On the road, this rule translates simply: the first priority should be for the pedestrian, the citizen who walks on two feet. But look at our cities. The pavements are being cut and the roads are being taken over by cars and two-wheelers.

In education, this rule means: priority for primary education in the villages. In health: save the girl child, ban female infanticide.

For the environment: embrace trees to the death, like Shahid Amritadevi and 362 other Bishnoi martyrs at Khejarli village, near Jodhpur in 1730.

In journalism, save and cherish the reporter of facts, the most endangered species in journalism, from the rampage of the advertorial-writers, the deception of the PR agencies, the target-mad circulation and marketing departments –- the whole gang of space marketeers, in the pay of corporate profiteering.

Add to this list. In general, resist the bullying and persecution of the minorities by the brute majority in any sphere of Life and Nature.

*****

I have kept this post brief, down to 600 words, because I want my readers to participate – my family, my students, my friends and my colleagues. Do you agree with my first rule of the road on the journey called Life? Do you have some other rule that you would place at No. 1? What are some of the other rules along the road to Life?

I thank all those who sent me their best wishes on completing three years of my second innings. I hope I can live up to your expectations and make our coming years worth our while.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, India, Sunday, 6th September 2009.

Second innings: 3 years of living and loving

2009-08-30T22:45:00.023+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

The second of September 2006 is the first day of my second innings. I am grateful to have got a second chance. So on Wednesday, 2 September this year, I complete Year 3; though on the wall calendar I have crossed 58 years on Mother Earth.

My colleagues at the Bharatiya Jain Sanghatana, Pune, tell me how I showed up at the office near Chaturshringi on Friday, 1 September. But then for the next three months, I missed my three-days-a-week at this NGO, founded by the social reformer, educationist and servant of India, Shantilal Muttha.

My students of the 2007 and 2008 batches still remember how I took lectures during the week ending Saturday, 2 September. But I did not turn up for classes from Monday, 4 September, because I was admitted to the Deenanath Hospital in Pune.

I had suffered a heart attack. Now that I survived and have been living and loving for the last three years, allow me to thank all the people who saw me through those days.

My wife Kalpana and daughter Pallavi were with me at home that evening. My brother-in-law Dr. Rajeev Joshi, was also in Pune and at home. Our neighbours at Swanand, Aapli Society, were also indoors. So when the heart attack came, the cardiac ambulance of the Pune Heart Brigade (phone 1050 from anywhere in Pune) could be summoned and rushed me within "the golden hour" to the hospital. My brother-in-law’s classmate Dr Shireesh Sathe, who operated on me, was also in town that weekend. I am lucky to have had all these people in their places that Saturday.

The Emergency Medical Services (EMS) run by the Pune Heart Brigade had saved 17,500 lives, including mine, till end 2007. Even today, whenever I visit a patient at Deenanath Hospital, I drop into the Casualty ward and thank the staff on ambulance duty, without whose prompt help I could not have been writing these words today.

*****

Flat on my back at home, with the unbearable pain crushing my rib-cage, I can still recall visualising my photo with a black border in the "Obituary" section of the papers next morning. I used to work night shifts at the sub desk and accept the obituary notices for the Maharashtra Herald in Pune, during 1983-90. So I mumbled to myself through the engulfing darkness, "This is it now for you, Joe!" Luckily, that was not to be.

I flatter myself to think that my family, friends, colleagues and students loved me too much to let me go –- so soon. Maybe I have some unfinished work to complete, before my turn comes. So, I got my second chance.

In the first few days of white, I cannot recall who came to visit me. But slowly the faces began to register. I remember each one of them with deep gratitude, for they put me back in touch with the blues and greens of the world outside.

As I left the hospital and was returning home in the ambulance, I could see the clouds breaking through, as the sun set. In the cloud-pictures, I like to think I saw my mother’s smiling face, welcoming me back into our world that she had left so abruptly in 1969.

Since the mid-1970s, I have not been a believer in life after death or supernatural powers. But I like to believe that the mother who gave me birth and, in that sense, lives within me as I breathe, wanted to complete her life cruelly cut short. She could not live it out fully herself.

Now I like to believe she was giving me, her son, a chance to live out his life -- and her life -- again. She lives in my memoir. Click on the links, alongside this post, to read the five parts.

*****

When I came back home, everything about my lifestyle would change completely: food and diet, regular exercise; yoga for stress management.

For opening my eyes to these neglected facts of life, I have to thank Dr. Dean Ornish’s "Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery ". The book explains the kinds of food to eat and what to avoid, as well as the need for regular exercise and stress management through yoga.

Thank you, Ashok Gopal, for giving me the book. And D. for caring.

Dean Ornish, M.D., is the founder and president of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, USA.

The first edition of Dean Ornish's Reversing Heart Disease, was published by Random House in 1990 and is available as a Ballantine paperback in India for Rs 250-300, depending on the discount. The 640-page book is priced 8 US dollars.

*****

First, food and diet.

When I look back at what I used to eat, especially the fried stuff (samosas, batata-wadas, bhaji, namkeen or farsan) and the bakery products, loaded with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils(butter, cakes, pattice, nankatai biscuits), I know now how I was inviting trouble.

Today, I resist these dangerously tasty items as pictures on menu-cards. I can identify them as the junk that clogs my arteries. And I turn my mouth away -- resolutely towards fruits and green leafy vegetables.

Second, regular exercise.

Having travelled like a gypsy (during my railway childhood and full-timer youth), I had reached the still stage, when I would return home tired and unwilling to travel -- from the living-room, to the bed-room, to the kitchen!!!

You can imagine how this shocking lack of exercise, combined with the “exertion” of lectures and the sedentary office was harming my body.

Third, yoga for stress management.

Dean Ornish opened my eyes to our India viraasat -- yoga and deep breathing, something I knew well, but was not doing. Yoga helps me to manage stress.

Even today, a five-minute stint of pranayam is sufficient to help me withstand the “chhote shaitans” (little devils) on Pune roads, darting about on their two-wheelers.

By February 2007, my weight had dropped from 87 kg to 65 kg. I managed to lose 22 kg during the first six months of my illness. My shirts and trousers hung around me like I was wearing a bedsheet, and I had to stitch new sets of clothes. This was the result of a strict fat-free diet, a regular brisk walk and yoga.

*****

Like all heart patients, I am struggling daily to keep to the strict regimen, suggested by Dean Ornish. Fortunately, I had had built up strong will-power, having given up smoking in 1982, after 11 years of being a chain-smoker.

I can resist the oily fried foods and crisp crunchy bakery products that I used to relish. For this, I have to thank my wife and daughter for supporting me to say, "NO!!!". My father had taught me yoga, which I always enjoyed. But I did not fully appreciate its deep and intimate connection with stress management.

What I find most difficult is to take a brisk 40-minute walk –- six days a week -- the cardiac exercise that my heart needs most.

So, I try to close my eyes and think of the Yeshwantrao Chavan municipal garden that forms one corner of the Shiv Darshan chowk (junction), near our Aapli cooperative housing society.

I first became friends with the mud and stones; trees, plants, dried fallen leaves and blooming flowers; crows and cats, in this small garden when I used to walk in it every day from the first week of December 2006. But I am sorry that I do not meet my natural friends as often as I must and I promise myself that I shall not let my body down.

With a lot of help from my family, friends, colleagues and students, I have humbly resisted the temptations that seduced me in the bad old days and unlearned some of the harmful habits that dragged me down.

Started on 2 October 2008, my blog has also helped me to swim "Against the Tide". As a part of the healing therapy that I have devised for myself, my blog has rebuilt and sustained a lifestyle that is healthy for me.

Thank you all. Your good wishes and messages carry me on. I look forward eagerly to your love and caring, as I enter my Year 4.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, India, Sunday, 30 August 2009.

Fight the H1N1 flu with facts, not fear

2009-08-10T20:19:00.020+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

The title “Fight the flu with facts, not fear” of this post is borrowed from an excellent report entitled, “To fight flu, facts not fear” (30 July 2009, Indian Express, Pune edition), written by Anuradha Mascarenhas, one of Pune’s outstanding journalists.

On Saturday, 8 August, we took our daughter for screening, since she had high fever for two days. I reached the municipal dispensary at 9.30 am. The Dr Dwarkanath Kotnis Memorial Municipal Dispensary, locally called Gadikhana, is located in the heart of old Pune city, near Mandai (the old market area). This was two days after August 6, the 64th anniversary of the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima by the USA.

While waiting, I spoke with some civic employees. One of them was upset that some well-off people seemed to look down upon the civic dispensary. He felt rich folk wanted the government to allow private doctors and hospitals to treat the flu, because they did not want to mix with poor people and get treated in government hospitals. A rickshaw driver also told me that a lot of “shrimant” people, who were his customers, resented that they had to wait in queues at the govt hospitals.

This is a reflection of the sad state of public health in India. The rich have their private hospitals and the poor have to fend for themselves in govt hospitals. I have stayed in Britain and marvel as well as envy the wonderful National Health Service, which even the free-maketeering Thatcherites were unable to dismantle. This is a topic of debate and I want your comments on this point.

*****

When my wife and daughter arrived, we went to the first floor. There were around 50-60 persons waiting in two queues. One queue started near the staircase, at one end of the corridor. Here two clerks were issuing case papers. After you got a case paper, you stood in another queue to meet the doctor.

I did not go in, but my wife said the doctors were deciding, whether to take the throat swab or not and send you to Naidu Hospital for testing, on the basis of whether you had come in contact with a positive patient or you had certain symptoms.

So, on the basis of the screening, our daughter was sent home with some medicine. This “testing protocol” seemed inadequate. The next day, 7 August, I heard the government and doctors felt the H1N1 virus was getting “entrenched in the local community” and, therefore, anyone having the symptoms should be sent to Naidu Hospital for a throat swab and test. This is the proper way, but I do not know whether it is being done.

The other impression one gets is that the municipal doctors may not be sending you for the test because, they say, it is “expensive”. If you insist that a test be done, they tell you that the test costs Rs. 10,000 and not everyone who asks for it will be tested. This naturally makes people anxious. Fortunately, our daughter’s fever lasted for two days and has now subsided.

Deepthy Menon, Mumbai Bureau chief, Times Now, was also down in Pune covering the flu. I could not go to meet her, since I am a heart patient and did not want to risk going into the crowded Naidu or Sassoon Hospital areas.

This makes me wonder: I hope our journalists are taking proper precautions while covering the flu, since they are going into crowded areas where there a large number of patients, some of whom maybe carriers. I wish that my students and colleagues keep their health while covering this difficult assignment. This is part of the job, an occupational hazard.

As I was touching up this post, I spoke to Deepthy (an SIMC alumni) and she told me that she was at home with a cold. She had none of the three key symptoms (a sore throat and cough; a running nose; breathlessness), but since she was covering Naidu and Sassoon Hospitals in Pune, I told her she must point this out to the doctor and ensure she gets tested. I called her again, Wednesday, 19 August. She's at home, tested negative for the flu, recovering.

Journalists like doctors, nurses and other care-givers fall in the high-risk vulnerable groups. Take care.

*****

I think many newspapers in Pune, especially TV channels (my bugbear), more so the Marathi vahini like Star Mazha and IBN Lokmat, are adding to the scare by repeatedly showing photos of people in masks and long queues. This frightens citizens into a panic. Can’t they display comforting visuals? Also the copy and the sound bytes are hyped up and the headlines scream out at you.

On the other hand, a heart-warming story entitled, “Swine flu work in process” (IE, Pune, 9 August 2009) by Anuradha Mascarenhas educates us gently. She has described in detail the hard-working scientists and technicians of the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, doing their job quietly. This is the kind of patient, routine, groundwork that goes on – nameless, faceless and unsung.

(Their work reminded me of my early days in Maharashtra Herald as a sub-editor from 1983 onwards. Subs correct grammar and spellings, touch up the body, iron out the creases and wrinkles, give an eye-grabbing headline and place the story where it will surely be read as soon as the reader picks up the morning paper. But the subs remain – nameless, faceless and unsung.)

By putting human names and warm faces to the “scientific” detectives at NIV tracking down the deadly virus, Anuradha has made accessible and credible what is hidden from the public, behind a veil of needless official secrecy. But nowhere has she glorified the scientific workers and created “celebrities” out of these diligent government servants, whom it has currently become fashionable to malign.

Let us thank Dr. A. C. Mishra, Director, NIV, and Dr. M. S. Chadha, Deputy Director, NIV, with their sincere team as well as the competent government authorities, for permitting Anuradha to write this report. I have covered the NIV beat and I know what it means to have public-minded scientists cooperating and collaborating with journalists in order to educate the public.

I have watched Anuradha blossom into an outstanding journalist, first at Maharashtra Herald and then Indian Express, both in Pune. She is a gold medallist from the Department of Communication and Journalism, University of Pune. I am proud of her as a colleague and wish her all that she deserves. Click here for her stories on the IE website.

Anuradha’s stories serve another public purpose. On behalf of the people of Pune, her stories are an open way of thanking the NIV team for their hard work and sincere efforts – beyond the call of duty and the monthly pay-packet.

Easy it is to criticise government officials. But difficult it is to say a good word when they do a fine job, in adverse circumstances against what Dr Margaret Chan, D-G, WHO, calls a “capricious” virus. By her stories, Anuradha says “Thank you!” to the scientists on our behalf.

*****

Another journalist who is doing excellent work educating the Pune public, rather than driving them into hysteria, is Vinita Deshmukh, editor of the weekly Intelligent Pune (iPune). She was a recipient of the Chameli Devi Jain award for Outstanding Woman Mediaperson for 2008-09.

The iPune has written about the work being done by government hospitals in Pune, "Kudos to Naidu Hospital" by Piyush Kumar Tripathi (31 July - 6 August 2009, iPune). This piece appeared when there were 59 cases (256 cases by 10 August) in Pune and even before the first death due to the H1N1 virus took place in Pune on 3 August.

At a time when most newspapers were criticising the government for its response, the iPune report shows how the Naidu Hospital doctors, nurses and staff are rising to the occasion and boosts their morale.

*****

Here are some links that you may find useful.

First, the swine influenza link on the NIV site, which leads you to other important links and documents. You can also call NIV on two phone numbers during the day. But make sure do not trouble them needlessly. They are busy doing our work day-and-night.

Second, the guidelines on the World Health Organisation (WHO) site. I found the FAQs, especially “What can I do?” most valuable. Navigate this site and unearth treasures here.

Third, the general information section on the H1N1 flu at the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Here I found “What to do if you get flu-like symptoms” factual and hence reassuring. This site also has a wealth of facts and figures.

Four, we have the site of our Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Govt. of India. Please follow the instructions given here. There is also offcial data on this site. If you want to make our elected representatives answerable to the people, this is a site to monitor.

Since a lot of us are probably wearing masks, Rujuta Teredesai sent me this useful WHO advice on wearing masks. Click here.

These are some of the websites and pieces I talked about in the beginning of this post that will help us “Fight the H1N1 flu with facts, not fear”. Let us hope that, with facts and figures getting the upper hand, the man-made panic and the media-fed frenzy subsides.

Drink lots of water and wash your hands - two simple precautions we all must take. Take care.

Your support is my strength.
- Joe.

Pune, India, Monday, 10 August 2009, the day after Nagasaki Day.

Sakal ‘incites mischief’ against teachers

2009-08-03T00:12:00.007+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

The test of a working journalist and editor is how you care about what appears in your newspaper at times of conflict and confrontation. For I believe that readers are extra-receptive to what their favourite newspaper says – when the atmosphere is charged, for example, during riots or strikes.

That is why I was outraged by the headline and caption of a photograph that appeared in one of Pune’s most highly respected and honourable Marathi newspapers. Currently, more than 30,000 senior college teachers are on strike in Maharashtra, demanding that the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission should be also applied to them – without discrimination.

For me, the question is: “Should self-respecting senior college teachers be forced to resort to a strike, in order to compel the Maharashtra Government to give them what the Union Government has decreed is their rightful due?” The simple answer is, “No! The teachers must be given what the Government has promised them.” Framed in this way, the demand of the striking college teachers seems fair and just.

But let us look at how Sakal, one of Maharashtra’s most highly respected newspapers presents the case of the striking teachers. I was advised to rely on Sakal for honest and accurate reporting, ever since I joined Maharashtra Herald as a sub-editor in 1983. Some of my journalist colleagues, whom I respect and admire, belong to this paper. The first and foremost of them was the late Varun Bhide, one of the most fearless and honest journalists I have met and known. The list of the others is long and illustrious. So it is not easy for me to criticise it.

Let me describe the photograph, since I have not been able to download it from the electronic edition of this paper, which is more than 75 years old. The colour photo, is placed in a box in the top left-hand corner, extending across columns 1 to 4 in an 8-column grid on page 3 of the main Pune edition, dated Thursday, 30 July 2009.

The photograph is datelined Solapur, a district town, midway on the railroad between Pune and Hyderabad. It portrays in the left foreground a lone woman labourer breaking stones by the roadside. Beyond the pile of stones, a morcha (procession) of teachers is passing by. The morcha shows a group of female teachers followed by male teachers in the winding distance. One of the women teachers is holding a placard, “We demand salary and allowances according to the Sixth Pay Commission”.

But the five-word headline, in single inverted commas, pulled my eye out of its morning socket, ‘Ahe re ani nahin re’ (‘The haves and have-nots’). If it was not for this provocative headline, I would not have read the caption. But the ‘inequality’ caption stirred me. I must confess my socialist, nay communist, leanings at the outset so that a fair disclosure helps the reader to put my outrage into context.

Let me reproduce the caption in Marathi and then translate it into English: “Solapur: Pach aakdi pagar ghenara; pan tohi pota sathi kami padtoy, ase mhanat Sahavya Vetan Aayoga sathi morcha kadhnara pradhyapak varga ani tyach barobar potachi tich-bhar khalgi bharnya sathi khadi phodat sangharsh karnarya kashtakari vargache pratinidhitva karnari mahila ekach chhaya-chitrat disat aheth. Solapur Vidyapeethachya parisarat tiplele chhaya-chitra. (Photographer: Ramdas Katkar)

My translation cannot capture the raw punch of the original in Marathi: “Getting a five-figure salary; but saying that too is not enough for the stomach, the teaching class takes out a morcha, demanding implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission. On the other hand a woman labourer, representing the struggling working class, breaks stones to fill her tiny hollow stomach. Both can be seen in the same photograph near Solapur University.” (Photo: Ramdas Katkar)

When my eye had subsided into its socket and my outrage had calmed, I rang up a senior journalist (also a close friend) from Sakal, whose name I shall not reveal. I told him that the text of the caption horrified me. I told him that Sakal was telling its readers that the striking teachers were not satisfied with their five-figure salaries and were greedily demanding more. By sharp contrast, here was this poor woman, breaking stones to fill the tiny hollow of her stomach.

Sakal was pitting the class of teachers against the working class, using the photograph as an excuse. I accused Sakal of ‘inciting mischief’ against the striking teachers, with the hidden agenda of depriving teachers from getting any sympathy for their just and fair demands.

The senior journalist from Sakal thought differently. He argued that the photograph merely depicted the inequality (vishamta) existing in society and no other meaning should be attributed to the caption and headline. I told him I would write a letter to the editor spelling out my outrage.

Over the last three days, I have been thinking out the contents of the letter I said I would write to the editor of Sakal. Now I have decided NOT to send that letter and instead express my views on my blog.

What is the point of getting a small letter published on the edit page? Enormous damage has already been done. In one stroke, a five-word headline (in inverted commas) and a three-liner 39-word caption have declared that the teaching community in Maharashtra should be satisfied with what they have and not strike for more.

This is an attempt to sway the public and ensure that the striking teachers do not get the sympathy they deserve for their fair and just demands? Is this the power of the higly respected and honourable Sakal: “power without responsibility”?

I would like to have your free, frank, fearless … and fair comments.

Your support is my strength.
- Joe.

Pune, India, Sunday, 2 August 2009.

Dubai seen in the words of a philosopher

2009-07-19T23:06:00.029+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

A philosopher, whose words are among the most derided today, wrote in 1848, “A spectre is haunting Europe.” More than 160 years later, no such spectre may haunt the world. But for me, he made common sense when I visited Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently.

The visit was strictly personal. I came back refreshed and replenished. But I cannot conceal that it was also political. I recalled a phrase, hanging from the threads of the flower children from the 1960s and 1970s, resisting the Vietnam War: “the personal is the political”, a slogan that was also central to the feminist movement.

The waiter wiped the table with tissue paper

A close relative took me to a family restaurant for breakfast. Outside, it was Dubai in June: hot and humid; cars and concrete. Inside, it could have been any Indian city, any time of the year: dosas and filter coffee; spicy conversation dripping from Indian tongues.

Except, the waiter wiped the table with tissue paper.

I glanced at him. His face reminded me of the waiters who served us at Raj Mahal, an Udipi hotel in Dhobi Talao, Mumbai, when I was studying at St Xavier’s College. I have not seen this happen, anywhere in India. We had our fill of sheera and dosas with chutneys. But as we left by car, our personal meal became my first political insight.

My feelings grew firmer as I rambled for ten days. During a lunch, a student described how she was afraid that Dubai had exploded from a fishing community for a thousand years (dates, pearls) into one of the most modern cities of the world – since the first shipment of oil in 1969, and, more so, within her own memory of barely two decades!

So when I returned to Pune, I dug out and re-read my famous philosopher. This is how I propose to write this post: a sentence or paragraph (in bold italics) from the little book by the famous philosopher; then my observations and reflections. I will try and see Dubai in the words of the philosopher, who dared to change the world.

“The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape (of Good Hope), opened up fresh ground … The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies … gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby … a rapid development. … Modern industry has established the world-market …”

Everywhere in Dubai, you can ‘see’ money shining; and ‘feel’ the naked power of finance capital with “C” in capitals of concrete and steel: in the flashy cars, on the smooth roads, in the magic malls, the Jebel Ali Free Trade Zone; and on people (present on the rich, absent on the poor).

And at the seven-star Atlantis The Palm Hotel, during a fashion show, someone mocked with envy, “Can you see the recession anywhere here, eh?” Merely the air-conditioning had already frozen the marrow of my bones into ice.

“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie … has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals ... ”

Tens of huge cool towers lined up the big, main road like two rows of pillars holding up the hot sky. There is sand where I stand. I pinch myself awe-struck at the lawns in the desert. That Dubai is being erected in the twenty-first century does not detract from it being branded a wonder.

As a young man I had read ‘The City of the Yellow Devil’ by the Soviet writer Maxim Gorky (1868-1936). Moving around Dubai in 2009, I knew how Gorky must have despaired when he visited New York in 1906 and published his essay in Appleton’s Magazine, an American publication in August of that year.

Dubai is an ever-changing tribute to world-class quality. The far-sighted and liberal rulers of Dubai have an unparalleled vision that is transforming the emirate into a niche of excellence. The city is shooting up like an adolescent teenager attached to a jet engine.

Like 24x7 ants, thousands of construction workers, from all corners of the world (from India: Kerala, coastal Karnataka, Goa, Bihar, U.P., A.P., Bangladesh), fabricate entire floors of skyscrapers in days. Just the car parks in the basement are three stories tall.

“The bourgeoisie has put an end to … idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the … ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors’, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment.’

Here I should only update my philosopher with the latest touch-screen ATMs and swiping credit cards.

“(The bourgeosie) has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value. And it has set up that single, un-conscionable freedom -- Free Trade.”

Like Ibn-Batuta, I scoured the ‘free trade’ malls. Like Diogenes of Athens, I walked through the ‘Mall of the Emirates’ window-shopping for the countless things I did NOT need. The two books I bought: for me, The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosentiel (second edition, 2007, Three Rivers Press); for my close relative, Maverick by Ricardo Semler. Leaving, at the airport, I was shaken by the last-moment scramble in duty-free Dubai; the key-words here being “free to buy”.

“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society … Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch … All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”

Since our summer vacations with our grand-parents, I had known that generations of my native brothers and sisters had abandoned the comfort of red mud, coconut villages, scattered along the Canara coast, around Mangalore, and migrated to the Gulf in search of the good life.

Serving as an editor in the land of my ancestors, where Konkani is the official language, I had heard of ‘Goan Gulfies’, men who came back with finger-thick gold chains dangling from their necks.

In 1967, when I passed Class 11, a close relative of my father had gifted me a Sovar Prima watch – made in Switzerland, bought in Saudi Arabia, worn in Mumbai. On formal occasions, I still wear it as a precious heirloom.

On our journey back from Dubai, we bought a gift for a baby, newly born into our extended family. The baby dress: made in China, bought in Dubai, was given to the baby’s father in Pune, to be worn by the baby in California, USA.

But a wise NRI shopkeeper in Meena Bazar, Dubai, saved me from the embarrassment of buying an expensive Italian shirt made of Egyptian cotton. He advised me that the finest cotton was Indian, made by Century and Arvind, and available along Pune’s very own Laxmi Road. (“All that is solid (cotton) melts in the (Dubai) air.”)

I have returned from Dubai – humbled and chastened.

Sitting here at my Fujitsu-Siemens laptop (“All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.”), I dwell in my mind’s eye upon my beautiful, special and different nephew, Adrian Terence D’Souza.

"With sober senses", I visualise the 26 year-old singing Konkani cantara, playing the drums, kicking a football, drawing his blue ‘Time is running out! … Save water!’ picture and laying out the table at the hotel, where he welcomes his honoured guests.

And hot tears roll down my cheek. I hope in international solidarity for my brave brothers and sisters, who toil in Dubai. Peace and love to you, mates.

This then is my Dubai, seen in the words of a philosopher.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, India, Sunday, 19th July 2009.

Our World is Connected. Why isn’t Education? – Part 2

2009-07-12T20:08:00.014+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

“Few colleges today seem to know how learning will happen on campuses,” my dear friend and colleague, Shashidhar Nanjundaiah, had asserted last Sunday in Part 1 of his loud-thinking on the inter-disciplinary approach to education.

Shashi went on to ask, “So how can educational institutions in India change their educational methodology to make our students think independently and constantly ask themselves questions?”

“Simple,” said Shashi, “Teach our students how to ask questions and how to seek out answers. To achieve this aim, independent and proactive learning is imperative. One way is to allow interdisciplinary research projects that will help students apply those linkages.”

*****

Shashi is grateful for the informed response to his piece on my blog, “The comments were so pertinent that I was compelled to respond, each time. The response speaks volumes of the quality of your readers, and their ability to think along with their writers. Clearly, you have been building an important niche here.

“I view the whole corpus of responses to my piece as a sort of a synecdoche for the kind of participative education, I’ve been clamouring for. Participative education involves:

- thinking through the content,
- relating it to the reader’s own life experiences,
- sharing the response based on an amalgamation of those experiences,
- the knowledge earned from the piece and
- critical thinking that we are all endowed with.

This process of participative education invaluably adds to our overall body of knowledge."

To all those who commented on Part 1, thank you so much. To all those who read the piece and had an opinions but did not comment, I urge you to write a few lines, now that you have the entire article in front of you. Part 2 of his piece follows:

*****

Our World is Connected. Why isn’t Education? – Part 2

By Shashidhar Nanjundaiah *

Our world does not have walls.

For a change, let education mime life.

Why were some of us made to take a specific combination of subjects at college – Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics or Biology at pre-university; then Physics, Chemistry or Mathematics at the graduate level?

Why not a mix of Physics, English Literature and Geography? Is it because the makers of education policy wanted to make sure the degrees they were awarding were either a ‘B.Sc.’ or a ‘B.A.’ or a “B.Com”?

Why?

The easiest thing for students to understand would be linkages across disciplines in the professional world. “Interdisciplinary” indicates that our learning needs to be across disciplines, not just in one discipline, and linking disciplines along the way.

The Harvard Business School, in its review seminar in November 2008, felt that its MBAs were increasingly becoming irrelevant in a globalizing world. The solution? Their MBA programs will become increasingly interdisciplinary in approach.

If each level of higher education provided the following to our budding managers, communicators and, even, techies, each of us would feel far more educated than we do today:

- Provide input in a variety of general subjects – Geography, History, Statistics, Economics, Psychology, to name a few – but convert that input in an applied way; applied to the student’s major field of study. All it takes is a refresher course of what we already learnt at school. But this time around, the subjects are linked to the profession that we have chosen.

In a survey I conducted in late 2008, senior industry practitioners and hiring managers in India, USA and UK unanimously agreed that this approach would provide a more global world-view and make students more employable.

- Allow students to choose independent research projects. Then allow them to choose which subjects would be most useful to their project. They could then choose which classes to take. The successful completion of an interdisciplinary project is a sure way of making graduates think analytically and to break down academic walls.

- Take the interdisciplinary approach, whereby curriculum experts and teachers collaborate to carefully ‘map’ the content of a subject on to the desired learning outcome.

(For example, in a management institute, that goal could be to produce an effective manager, equipped with a well-rounded world-view and sound judgment. A question we could be asking ourselves in designing such a course is, “Which portions of, say, Psychology, would be most relevant to a manager?”)

*****

Why are we learning what we’re learning? This is the trickiest question, of them all.

Why was I doing all that burette-pipette color-change stuff in the school lab? Why did I need to know the laws of probability? Did I ever question why I needed to know that Akbar died in 1605, while I didn’t know what his contribution was to our modern society?

The answer is: we don’t know. Input (and output) among a majority of our educational institutions has been largely tools-oriented. If you asked professional graduates why they should or ought to know what they know, a large percentage would draw a blank.

The global marketplace is more demanding of broader skill-sets than before. The requirement set is solutions-driven: a combination of technological, professional, business, social and life skills – and much more that is intangible.

No longer is it enough to “super-specialize” – there is more demand for multi-skilled multi-specialists and generalists, who can adapt to specific environments. While some of these skills may evolve over time, many of them need a fundamental change in the way academic institutions think.

*****

Unesco’s four noble principles of learning

UNESCO’s International Commission on Education for the 21st Century states that education must be organized around four types of learning:
– learning to know, that is acquiring the instruments of understanding;
– learning to do, so as to be able to act creatively in one’s environment;
– learning to live together, so as to participate and cooperate with other people in all human activities; and
– learning to be, a progression toward sustainable existence.

The true integration of these four principles can only occur when learning is the acquisition of skills for employment and/or entrepreneurship.

*****

Right now, our system does not allow students to understand and use the interdisciplinary nature of their professional world. Some of us educators have pontificated on the application of subjects to the dreaded ‘real world’.

Some of the more daring ones among us have even attempted to point out what ought to have been the obvious: that the subjects we teach have a bearing on our life’s experiences.

But very few educators have attempted to show how. Further, few, if any, have attempted to draw linkages between subjects, or areas of study.

The integration and interaction of disciplines at once widens the boundaries, but expects an employee to quickly learn to specialize. It is important to recognize that education is only a trigger to learn, and often results in individuals understanding their own capabilities in a better way.

(Concluded.)

* Shashidhar Nanjundaiah was the Founding Director of the Pune-based Indira School of Communication (ISC) in 2004. For the first time in India, ISC modestly attempted an interdisciplinary approach. He was also the Director of the Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communication, Pune, and the Managing Editor of The Indian Express (North American Editions), New York.

Shashi now consults for educational institutions and is building an international college of interdisciplinary studies in India.

For more insight on the interdisciplinary approach, visit an interview dated 21 October 2008 with the author in “Higher Education Management”, founded by Keith Hampson, PhD. To read the full interview, click here.

You may also write directly to Shashi at: shashi.nanjundaiah@hotmail.com OR snanjundiah@hotmail.com

To all my dear readers who took the care and trouble to comment on Part 1: we thank you so much. To all who read the piece and had an opinion, but did not comment: we urge you to write this time, now that you have the entire article in front of you.

Please comment now, before you proceed to read the rest of my blog for this Sunday.

Stand up and be counted ...

2009-07-12T19:45:00.016+05:30

A judgement of the Delhi High Court thrilled me -- no end.

I remembered with love and affection my dear friend from the 1970s, Askok Row Kavi of Mumbai, a bold journalist and daring editor for his pioneering magazine, Bombay Dost. I have supported the struggle Bombay Dost put up "against the tide" for all humans with a different sexuality.

In my classes, since 1987 in Pune, my students have learned to respect, promote and support various "minority" issues: the beautiful, special and different peoples and causes of our world. One of the reasons why I gave my blog the title, "Against the Tide" is to highlight "minority" issues and the resistance put up by minority groups and peoples.

For example, I have been asking some of my best students, who care deeply about stray dogs, to write about the persecution these street animals face from otherwise sane and respectable citizens.

Though we had pet dogs at home when we were children in Solapur and Manmad, my mother cared deeply about strays. In a quiet moment she would take me aside and warn me that, if I did not care deeply for and sustain my mother tongue, Konkani, this beautiful and ancient language could be annihilated like the stray dogs of this world.

Other issues are strictly not minority issues, but need to be taken up "as if" they affected a minority. For example in Pune, can you imagine that citizens have to campaign for pavements to walk upon? The rights of pedestrians are being neglected in Pune, while civic authorities are creating a city that is friendly for two-wheelers and cars.

Most citizens have to walk at some time or the other; so apparently pedestrian rights seem to concern the majority. But since the "right to walk safely" is being trampled upon, protecting pedestrian rights becomes a minority issue.

Lovers of trees, open spaces, gardens, the hill slopes, small water bodies, rivers, also have to be constantly vigilant. Trees, gardens and open spaces, that cannot protect themselves, are under threat.

My friend, Vinita Deshmukh, who edits the small but courageous weekly newspaper, Intelligent Pune, would say the Right to Information (RTI) law is also a key minority issue that needs to be stoutly defended, considering how even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wants to scuttle this pro-people legislation by making “notings” by bureaucrats exempt from its purview.

We each can and ought to pick our own minority issue to campaign for. This is what makes us a democratic society, where citizens participate in governance and not merely vote in elections.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, India, Sunday, 12th July 2009.

Our World is Connected. Why isn’t Education? – Part 1

2009-07-05T15:53:00.046+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

Not just film-stars and cricketers, but journalists, editors and directors of educational institutions are greedy to become celebrities. Soon, there are no engrossing movies, no great cricket matches, no facts in our newspapers, no editorials inspiring us to thought and action and no "drawing forth" of young minds.

On the 9th of June, I met again with Shashi Nanjundaiah in Pune. Some of you are his students, when he was a director at SIMC and then a founding director of the Indira School of Communication in 2004 in Pune. Others may have taught at the places he gave direction to.

I admire him. Shashi is different. He is not a celebrity. Shashi is committed to excellence in the quality of education.

Like some of my editor friends who can still write and inspire their readers to action, but unlike some cricketers who spend less time on the field but more seconds on the TV screen endorsing brands, Shashi thinks deeply and acts.

We sat with coffee and idlis at Wadeshwar Restaurant on F.C. Road, catching up with the waters that passed under Lakdi Pul. Soon the minutes passed into hours. What was it that swallowed our time? When we finished our academic conversation, I asked Shashi to write, for my blog, a piece about the inter-disciplinary approach in education, that gripped his mind. Here it is:

*****

Our World is Connected. Why isn’t Education? – Part 1

By Shashidhar Nanjundaiah *

Can you imagine a switch that lights up each time there is mail in your outdoor postal mailbox, and another switch transfers the mail indoors through a pipe? Suitable for the elderly, especially in treacherous weather. Too American? Well, that’s because it is.

Recently, I had an opportunity to attend an "Invention Convention" for school children up to nine years, whose products were chosen from about 10 schools in rural Warren County in New Jersey, USA — certainly not known for scientific geniuses.

The children came up with products that were practical, and provided practical answers to some household and social problems of modern American life. What impressed me even more than the design elements was the preparation of the school children to explain, pitch, market and sell effectively.

The mail-switch product, fully functional, was one such on display there — designed by an 8-year-old, sparkling-eyed, shy young woman of Indian origin. (Would it surprise us, if this young woman went on to do something innovative in her career?) There were 20 such products on display.

The ability of the students to come up with complete solutions, suitable for their local community, reflected their ability to identify a need, engage with their local environment and think seamlessly between physics, the social sciences, economics, design, as well as theory and common sense. They did so, in their own way, independently, and with some simple but effective guidance from their teachers.

Are our professional graduates employable?

Higher education in India typically suffers from "little creation of knowledge". This was a conclusion reached at a 2006 seminar called Washington Symposium NAFSA: Association of International Educators. They probably stopped short of another obvious fact: the lack of knowledge creation in our campuses is a major reason that many of our professional graduates may not be "employable".

Less than 25 percent of our country’s professional graduates are employable, says a Government of India research. As Michael Spence said in the 1970s, and Infosys's Chief Mentor N. R. Narayanamurthy echoed more recently, educational institutes have merely become a captive space, from where employers pick up inherently bright students.

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We have heard the rhetoric from management gurus and industry experts about the category of Indian professional graduates, who are largely unemployable:

- Employees who lack the ability to apply classroom education to the professions. In particular, fresh graduates who lack the ability to analyze situations from an all-round or 360-degree approach.

- Students from institutions, typically restricted by lack of quality input and innovative teachers.

- Graduates who do not know the basic facts about their environment and their world and, in general, have neither developed a world-view nor can they independently analyze professional situations.

- Graduates who do not have the ability or attitude to learn — that supreme capability of problem-solving, to constantly ask fundamental (and original) questions and to seek out innovative answers.

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Unfortunately, the above list would include a majority of professional graduates and institutions in India. Individual talent will always continue to shine through, despite the system. But systemically, educational training in India does not prepare our graduates to solve problems in a practical world, where they must apply their field of study, as well as put their worldviews and life skills to test.

Surely, the education system in India and we cannot look the other way, while our industries (Infy itself, for example) are starting their own training institutes to transform professional graduates into employable professional graduates?

And it's not content that’s the problem, is it? Information is at our fingertips today — literally. It is the structure of learning, or pedagogy, that's dubious. Few colleges today seem to know how learning will happen on campuses.

So how can educational institutions in India change their educational methodology to make our students think independently and constantly ask themselves questions?

Simple: teach them how to ask questions and how to seek out answers. To achieve this aim, independent and proactive learning is imperative. One way is to allow interdisciplinary research projects that will help students apply those linkages.

(To be continued. Part 2 will appear Sunday, 12 July.)

* Shashidhar Nanjundaiah was the Founding Director of the Pune-based Indira School of Communication (ISC), which modestly attempted an interdisciplinary approach, for the first time in India. He was also the Director of the Symbiosis Institute of Media & Communication (SIMC), Pune, and the Managing Editor of The Indian Express (North American Editions), New York. He now consults for educational institutions and is building an international college of interdisciplinary studies in India.

For more insight on the interdisciplinary approach, visit an interview dated 21 October 2008 with the author in "Higher Education Management" founded by Keith Hampson, PhD. To read the full interview, click here.

Email: shashi.nanjundaiah@hotmail.com. He is also on Facebook.

Before you proceed with the rest of my blog below, Shashi and I would be grateful for your comments on his paper.

From Dubai, with my mother's song-book

2009-07-05T15:30:00.024+05:30

We returned from Dubai on 29 June. That is one reason I missed my post last Sunday. Along with precious memories of :-

- a great holiday in the home of my only dearest sister Flavia;
- early morning walks and the smoothest of car drives with my brother-in-law Michael (more like a brother, actually);
- heart-to-heart chats with my two sprightly nieces, Rochelle (& Pradeep) and Nisha (& Roshan), and playing with their five wonderful kids;
- getting in touch with our umpteen relatives;
- breakfast with Reuven Proenca and lunch with Mansi Shah and Gunjan Chaurasia, three of my best students;
- and, above all, getting to re-know my beautiful, special and different nephew, Adrian Terence D'Souza, (click here to vote)

I have come home with a photo-copy of -- my mother's songbook!

More about Dubai, culled from this 12-day visit, in a later post. And more, gloriously much more, about my mother's 70-year-old song-book, when I can see again through the tears of the 40 years gone by, without her lovely smile.

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Look up the links of the "Blogs I Care About" displayed on the right, alongside this post. Most of the blogs are by my students, friends and colleagues. If you are the proud author of a blog, but it's not here on my list, please let me know in the comments section or email me at: sangatizuzay(at)gmail(dot)com.

Another year of learning beckons -- for you and for me. For some of us, learning will ignite in busy work places; for others learning will crackle within the four quiet walls of our homes. For me, a fresh batch of moist home-sick eyes and clean student ears will be eager to listen at SIMC, Ranade, Garware and the other places in Pune, where I learn. And what of learning for you, my dear students, friends, and colleagues?

At every desk, we weigh our words; walk the slack of balancing editorial policy with our conscience; shun the limelight; hold our heads high; censor the celebrity; protect the poor with compassion; "give peace a chance"; swim against the rich tide; lest we forget the children; leap at the scoop; and sleep the hard peace -- knowing we have done an honest job, fairly.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, India, Sunday, 5th July 2009.

Beautiful, special people enrich my life

2009-06-23T00:29:00.042+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

Most of us ‘normal’ people take our own abilities so much for granted that we keep demanding achievement from ourselves. So people with ‘special’ needs are perceived as ‘beautiful people’ because they put the few abilities they have to such fantastic use that we are astounded by how much they can do – with so little.

Though I will be talking about a sensitive and delicate topic, I reject the ‘politically correct’ (PC) usage that has been devised worldwide during the last few decades. To describe the ‘poor’ as the ‘underclass’ is as much a cover-up as it is a sham when ‘failure’ becomes ‘under-achievement’ or the ‘blind’ are glorified as ‘visually challenged’.

I shall go along with common sense: “Call a spade, a spade”, but avoid any derogatory meaning that lowers the dignity of the human being – disabled or challenged.

Enter: the first and second beautiful persons in my life

When I was doing my B.Sc. in St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, during 1967-71, I used to ‘read’ to a blind student who was doing a brilliant second M.A! Let us call him ‘Dilip’, because I have forgotten his name. We generally recognise people by their names or faces; some of us can distinguish between voices on the telephone. Dilip could identify who was coming up behind him!

Such an unusual ability, I wondered. Till I asked him how he did it. Dilip told me it was hard at first, till he began to listen intently for the small sounds that people made as they walked: from the scraping, stamping, stomping and shuffling of footwear; whether they dragged their feet, hopped lightly, or glided along on their toes.

He described to me his girl-friend who had a slight limp, so she dragged her left foot making a soft, rustling sound, like dried leaves lifted by a breeze, as she brought it up.

Dilip was the first of the beautiful people to enrich my life. The second was ‘Kate’, again a blind girl in Leeds, England, who taught me how to type, when I was 40 years old. She boosted my self-esteem by telling me simply that I could do anything I wanted – only if I desperately wanted to.

And shall I tell you how desperately I wanted to learn how to type? In July 1990, when we went abroad, I worked as a sub-editor in a Pune daily with paper and pen. The local copy was keyed in by our reporters on manual type-writers; the agency copy from UNI or PTI came on the ticker wire.

Then, we subs did the editing by hand and the type-setters re-typed the subbed copy. Even the editorials, I wrote out long-hand or dictated them at one go to our editorial secretary, Duru “ho ja shuru” Tejwani.

That was how I used to work in Maharashtra Herald, Pune, before I noticed in Leeds, England, that in all the Yorkshire newspapers, the subs used computers and knew how to type. I could see no way out but to learn – typing. The dread of what could happen to me, if I did not learn how to type was so strong that one night I had a dream.

In my nightmare, I saw myself standing outside Pune railway station with a begging bowl in hand crying out to passers-by, “De re Allah! De re Ram!” Because I had lost my job as a sub, since I did not know how to type!

That is when Kate came to my rescue. I had learnt simple keyboard skills using a Typing Tutor, due to the kindness of Peter Coltman from Leeds University. But where would I practise my novice skills? Kate used to come daily -- led by her Labrador guide dog -- to manage a Braille centre on the Red Route and she gave me the task of typing out an entire book on South Asian history for the reading pleasure of blind students. And so I learned me how to type diligently.

The art competition for Beautiful People in Dubai

Meanwhile, another ‘beautiful’ person was growing up far away from Pune in my native Mangalore: Adrian Terence D’Souza was born in 1983 to my sister Flavia and brother-in-law Michael. My sister had noticed he was unusually quiet as a baby and the shape of his forehead looked different from the two older sisters he had. Soon he was diagnosed as a child with Down’s Syndrome (DS).

Today Adrian “Manu” D’Souza is 26 years old and I had the wonderful opportunity to be with him during our stay at my sister’s home in Dubai since 17 June. (We will be here till 29 June.) My sister tells me Adrian has taken to painting during the last one year at the JamJar, Dubai, an activity organised by START, one of whose founders is the Al Madad Foundation.

The gorgeous evidence of Adrian’s slow and steady learning is not only scattered around their home but his picture has also been selected as one of 38 artworks as part of a Beautiful People competition. (Hence, the words "beautiful people" in the title of this post). Ms. Wemmy de Maaker introduced Beautiful People to my sister and other parents of children with special needs and is actively involved with the project in Dubai.

But at the outset, I declare a conflict of interest. Since Adrian is my ‘special’ nephew, I cannot be impartial in judging his ability. But I say he's good. Look for yourself and please vote for Adrian.

Adrian Terence D'Souza (26), my beautiful, special, different nephew

But there are 37 other special, beautiful and different people there too -- all of them already winners. So if you like them, you may vote for them. But remember one vote only. A vote will encourage beautiful people like Adrian immensely in the long journey of a crore miles.

Fortunately, his father, Mr. Michael D'Souza, Managing Director of Humaid Al Suwaidi, and a native of Puttur near Mangalore, is one of Dubai’s esteemed businessmen in real estate. So Adrian is well cared for.

Drums and soccer with Adrian & friends

What else am I doing in Dubai with this nephew of mine, Adrian, who is swimming against the tide? On 20 June, we go to see him learning the drums and kick football.

(As I write this, he comes up and tells me that I have not finished drinking the water in my mug. I have told him I am writing about him and he reads his own name “A-D-R-I-A-N” out loud.)

He knows the drums already and has a drum set at home, but practice is constantly required as DS kids (like many of us) can forget skills that they have learned. The teacher is Atsu Dagadu from Ghana, who belongs to Dubai Drums, and the session is free, held at the home of a gracious local Emirati lady, Mrs. Hanne Al Gurg.

The 12 kids along with their parents take active part drumming. What strikes me is how attentive the children are, stopping at exactly the point where the teacher tells them to finish off – every time!!! Since Adrian already knows the drums well, he is happy to play along.

Then we go to play soccer at the Hayya Club Meadows. Again a bunch of 10-15 kids are being taught free. Like the drumming this session too is coordinated by All 4 Down’s Syndrome Dubai, a voluntary support group, and the Soccer Kids Club (James Masterman, Ben McBride and group member Ingeborg Kroese)

In soccer, Adrian does not take part as much as the other kids, since he tends to watch the other kids play with his hands on his hips. Only occasionally does he get excited, when the ball is kept in front of him and he is asked to kick – at the goal. Then he gets really charged up.

But I recall there is this little scrawny girl – all so eager and bubbly – who would shoot a goal at one end and then turn the ball around to shoot a goal at the other end, oblivious of the side she belongs to! How she plays the game and scores goals for both sides, a virtue we have abandoned as normal people.

Activities like the soccer and drumming, which I witnessed, is mainly coordinated by the devoted and ever-energetic Sally Pearson, who strives tirelessly to keep the support going in Dubai. Her son Robin too is part of the group.

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Sunday in Dubai is NOT the weekly holiday it is in Pune, India. The weekend here starts on Thursday evening and people are back to work on Sunday morning. So on 21 June, I went along with Adrian and his mother (my sister) to the Oasis Court, a hotel of furnished apartments, which is managed by the D’Souza family, especially Ms. Rochelle Lobo, Adrian’s eldest sister.

Adrian has been meticulously trained by his counsellor Ms. Meenakshi Kumar to perform various functions, one of which is working at Oasis Court as a ‘trainee’ in Guest Relations from 9am to 12 noon, five days a week. In the near future, Adrian will also train at Dunes, another hotel of furnished apartments managed by Ms. Nisha D’Souza, his other sister.

Adrian greets the guests with a shy, “Welcome to Oasis Court!” then hands over the keys, TV remote, and other service cards, which familiarise the guests with the amenities available inside the furnished apartment and the facilities offered by the Oasis Court hotel. Finally, he leaves them with a cheery, “Have a good stay!”

To cast your vote for Adrian, please click here.

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Dilip in Mumbai, Kate in Leeds, my nephew Adrian in Dubai – three beautiful, special and different people who have enriched and are enriching my life. What can you do to enrich your lives?

Search out with all the compassion in your heart for the support groups in your local area for any beautiful and different people with special needs. Volunteer your knowledge, skills, time and energy to make things happen for them. "We give but little when we give of our possessions. It is when we give of ourselves that we truly give," said the mystical poet Kahlil Gibran of Lebanon.

And then surprise yourself; discover the secret well-springs that you never imagined could be hidden deep inside you.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, India, Monday, 22 June 2009, Summer Solstice.

True friend of people, labourer for liberty

2009-06-14T20:06:00.010+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

Friend! So warm, so close. Yet, so taken for granted, so misused. More so, when we speak of "friend of the people". Today, we shall discuss the life and work of one such dear and old friend of ours, of all the peoples of our world, so old that he died on 8 June 1809, two centuries ago.

Yet he lives today – fresh and free. You will not find him in the pages of newspapers or flashed on TV screens. For, he is not a celebrity. His simple words slip off the tongues of the rabble-rousers and the mob, they throb in the hearts and agitate the minds of all common people, the ordinary folk who hold "freedom" dear. Even a hypocrite like Bush could not but invoke the magic word “freedom” to justify the US invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan.

Who was this dear and old friend, who first coined the words, "The United States of America"? Who was this selfless labourer for liberty? Who was this man, that his book, Rights of Man (1792), was read by Mahatma Jyotiba Phule in Pune in 1847 and deeply influenced this champion of the dalits in India?

"The world is my country, to do good my religion"

In 1892, the centenary year of the publication of The Rights of Man, Robert Ingersoll wrote:

"If the people of the great Republic (USA) knew the life of this generous man, the real story of his services, his sufferings and his triumphs of what he did to compel the robed and crowned, the priests and kings, to give back to the people liberty, the jewel of the soul;

"If they knew that he was the first to write, “The Religion of Humanity”;

"If they knew that he, above all others, planted and watered the seeds of independence, of union, of nationality, in the hearts of our forefathers -- that his words were gladly repeated by the best and bravest in many lands;

"If they knew that he attempted, by the purest means, to attain the noblest and loftiest ends -- that he was original, sincere, intrepid, and that he could truthfully say: 'The world is my country, to do good my religion';

"If the people only knew all this -- the truth -- they would repeat the words of Andrew Jackson: 'Thomas Paine needs no monument made with hands; he has erected a monument in the hearts of all lovers of liberty."

I first read about Paine, while studying the history of the independence of the United States of America from colonial British rule. Here he wrote his classic Common Sense (1776). How come Tom Paine, an Englishman, had so much to do with the drafting of the American Declaration of Independence, I wondered?

With independence gained for American states, Paine went back to England, where his experience led him to write the Rights of Man (1791-92), in response to Edmund Burke’s fierce attack on the French Revolution. Paine was branded an outlaw in England for his anti-monarchist views. He would have been arrested but warned by the poet William Blake, he fled for France.

Soon this champion of liberty appeared in Paris pleading for mercy: that the life of the French King Louis XVI be spared: "I am not the personal enemy of kings. Quite the contrary. No man wishes more heartily than myself to see them all in the happy and honorable state of private individuals; but I am the avowed, open and intrepid enemy of what is called monarchy." This plea for mercy sent Paine to jail.

In this post, I have taken copious extracts and paraphrased from a brilliant piece by the American free-thinker Robert G. Ingersoll, published in 1892. (The Works of Ingersoll, New Dresden Edition). The Thomas Paine National Historical Association has an excellent website, with original writings by Thomas Paine.

Misunderstood and jailed by his French revolutionary friends, Paine wrote The Age of Reason (1794, 1796) in jail. "Paine clearly saw," according to Ingersoll, "that men could not be really free, or defend the freedom they had, unless they were free to think and speak. He felt that, being a man, he had the right to examine the creeds and the Scriptures for himself, and that, being an honest man, it was his duty and his privilege to tell his fellow-men the conclusions at which he arrived.

"Paine found that the creeds of all orthodox churches were absurd and cruel, and that the Bible was no better. Of course, he found that there were some good things in the creeds and in the Bible. These he defended, but the infamous, the inhuman, he attacked.

"In matters of religion he pursued the same course that he had in things political. He depended upon experience, and above all on reason. He refused to extinguish the light in his own soul. He was true to himself, and gave to others his honest thoughts. He did not seek wealth, or place, or fame. He sought the truth.

"Kings asserted that they derived their power, their right to govern, from God. To this assertion Paine replied with the Rights of Man. Priests pretended that they were the authorized agents of God. Paine replied with the Age of Reason.

"The Age of Reason affected the priests just as the Rights of Man affected nobles and kings. The kings answered the arguments of Paine with laws, the priests with lies. Kings appealed to force, priests to fraud. Paine contended for the rights of the individual, for the jurisdiction of the soul. Above all religions, Paine placed Reason; above all kings, Men; and above all men, Law."

For this frankness, he was reviled by the Christian churches and slandered in the USA, so much that when he returned, his reputation had been literally effaced. Across three nations, USA, England, France, Tom Paine fought for liberty. He took part in the writing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of Rights.

‘The pen of Paine; the sword of Washington’

"In all he wrote, Paine was direct and natural," says Ingersoll. "He touched the very heart of the subject. He was not awed by names or titles, by place or power. He never lost his regard for truth, for principle -- never wavered in his allegiance to reason, to what he believed to be right. His arguments were so lucid, so unanswerable, his comparisons and analogies so apt, so unexpected, that they excited the passionate admiration of friends and the unquenchable hatred of enemies.

"So great were these appeals to patriotism, to the love of liberty, the pride of independence, the glory of success, that it was said by some of the best and greatest of that time that the American cause owed as much to the pen of Paine as to the sword of Washington."

The Thomas Paine Society organised Paine 200, where Greg Cleays and John Keane, two major historians and biographers of Thomas Paine, assessed his legacy on the 200th anniversary of his death. For a recording of the two speakers, click here. John Keane has also written a superb biography of Tom Paine, which is available online. Click here.

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Alongside, my dear students, please have a look at the NYT links sent by my school-mate Vivek Pinto from Tokyo; in keeping with the tone of my blog. If you too wish to draw the attention of my readers to a particular story or article, please mail me the link and I shall upload it alongside my post.

I have taken Tom Paine this time, because the bi-centenary of his death provides us a useful peg to revive the work of a selfless human being, who laboured for liberty. But there is another more important reason. If you track the media carefully, you will find hardly any mention of this great man, even in the USA, for whose birth he was one of the great pioneers responsible.

My blog, Against the Tide, will highlight the lives and work of persons like Tom Paine; some living, others long gone. In future posts, at convenient times, I will take up:
- poets like Shelley, Byron, Pablo Neruda;
- essayists like William Hazlitt;
- scholars like Noam Chomsky;
- revolutionaries like Shahid Bhagat Singh, Che Guevara;
- historians like D.D. Kosambi, Howard Zinn;
- teachers like Paolo Friere, John Holt, Neill;
- people's scientists like J.B.S. Haldane, Meghnad Saha, J.D. Bernal;
- doctors like Patch Adams;
- journalists like John Pilger, Studs Terkel, Wilfred Burchett;
- musicians like Pete Seeger, Lennon and Dylan.
If you have any suggestions to add on this list, please let me know.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, India, Sunday, 14th June 2009.

Ways of seeing ... with compassion

2009-06-07T16:00:00.023+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

When the news first broke in India about racism in Australia, frankly I thought it was a recent phenomenon. So in response, I wrote a mild piece about how I had suffered at the hands of the racists when I was in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, during 1990-93. And how I could stand up, resist and ... survive, with a little help from my friends.

My intention was to encourage the sharing of experiences -- ugly or bad or good -- from other parts of India and the world, since we have our own perceptions; ways of viewing the world and responding to the behaviour of other peoples.

Deliberately, I did NOT describe the attacks I had heard of or read about in England, merely hinting that I had carefully collected clippings and documents about racist attacks. But when hundreds of students turned up for the protest march in Melbourne and in Sydney, and as I watched the Australian police beating up -- six-cops-to-a-protestor -- nay, curry bashing our fellow Indians, the blood of Shahid Bhagat Singh boiled in my body.

Ninety years ago, a white man "in Defence of the Realm" and the British Monarchy (and aided by our brown sipahis), had massacred hundreds of un-armed innocent peaceful protestors at Jallianwala Bagh. Despite that genocide, across the 20th century in India and into the 21st century in Australia, a former British colony, the so-called "civilised" White Man had not changed his racist colours.

I tried getting in touch with the few I knew in Australia, who could be counted upon to provide authentic information. Also scrounging the world wide web -- like the rag-picker Maharashtra Herald, Pune, had trained me to be -- I discovered the website of the Federation of Indian Students of Australia (FISA).

The FISA website is plain and unadorned like the hundreds of simple Indians you see all over the world: my own saviours, the Ekbote and Banhatti families in England; my indomitable mass comm students from Pune, I salute you; the Indian diaspora; like the memorable R.K. Narayan characters roaming the Malgudi landscape and Jhumpa Lahiri's Namesake.

So I plunged deep into the FISA website. And what did I find? I will cite only one gem by Ms. Alice Pung. Sad to say, it seems few of our journalists in India have bothered to mine the FISA website.

"Shunned in a strange land ..."

Ms. Alice Pung, a Melbourne-based writer and teacher, "worked for half a decade as a pastoral care adviser and residential tutor at the residential colleges of Melbourne University, in some of the most privileged academic environments". She has written a deeply compassionate piece entitled, "Shunned in a strange land, we should offer them more" on 17 August 2008. The piece has been taken courtesy The Age and the FISA website.

Ms. Pung wrote ten months ago, "I have seen my students through the beginning of their degrees when they are finding their feet in a foreign country, to their graduations and the quest for permanent residency. During this time, I have come to respect and admire their stoicism. They do not live in their own little worlds: they have opened up my world."

We know who these "stoic" Indian students are; students who have left their homes to study far away from the comfort of their families; the love of their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. I too know who these students are. I see them every semester when I start my classes in editing. Their homesick faces yearn for love and compassion; a kind word, a warm smile, a pat on the back. Across the years and my tears, I see some of you: on the front benches; at the back, asking questions, wanting to learn, to get it right.

As a teacher and visiting faculty of print journalism in Pune since 1987, I am known for the fierce discipline, forgive me, I maintain and shall expect in my classes. That is because, I think, the world outside is collapsing into chaos and anarchy. But once the ground rules have been understood and followed; the dialogue of our hearts and minds begins; soon my students and I find ourselves in our place where we can learn safely, make mistakes fearlessly.

Who are these "stoic" students from overseas?

Ms. Pung also knows who the overseas students are. She tells her Australian readers in Melbourne, "They are the students who serve our meals in Chinatown, the people who drive our taxis. They are the lowest-paid and often most-exploited workers, un-protected by Australian work-place relations legislation. We refuse to see their toils because it does not accord with our image of how our overseas cash-calves should be."

You can see how compassionate Ms. Pung is, how she is able to put herself into the chappals of the Indian student. "Eventually, most find company and comfort in the presence of each other," Ms. Pung concedes.

And then, from Ms. Pung, come the lines that should be engraved with golden letters in every classic of anthropology or sociology: "No one seems to begrudge Western students latching on to other Westerners when studying in Asia and forming insular little expatriate communities, to observe the locals as if they were sociological studies instead of people who are only separated by a different culture."

I have personally known and seen students and working people from Europe and USA behave in the most insular and insolent fashion, during their stays in our metro cities. So what of it? No! We Indians, who belong to an ancient civilisation that has assimilated invaders of all colours, we do not "begrudge" Westerners huddling around tables, downing their beers and chatting away. Indians try to tolerate others.

But Ms. Pung goes on, "But somehow, we in Australia seem to demand assimilation from our temporary visitors, instead of offering acceptance and understanding. Many international students are acutely aware that their parents back home are breaking their backs and bank accounts to send them here."

Then comes the punch; Ms. Pung is nearing the end of her piece, "It is not their duty to assimilate: many of them come here, under no uncertain terms, for an education. It is our duty to deliver that education. But perhaps it is also our obligation to show to our young overseas visitors that we are also a tolerant society —- and that we see them."

Thank you, Ms. Pung, for "seeing" our Indian and other overseas students. I hope to meet you in person some day, and thank you for your kindness to the young peoples of the world studying in a foreign place, no matter where.

"Never under-estimate the power of perception"

Besides the links, which I have mentioned in my post last Sunday, 31 May 2009, here is another perceptive analysis by Sarina Singh, senior author of the best-selling Lonely Planet guides to India and Pakistan: "Fear of Indian success led to curry bashing" (Times of India, Sunday, 7 June 2009).

Ms. Sarina Singh says her father, "Dr Bhagat Singh - whose father had migrated to Fiji after World War I - came to Australia in 1955 to study medicine at the University of Melbourne. He entered a country ruled by White Australia Policy, a racist legislation limiting non-white immigration from 1901 to 1973, which was spawned by fear that the non-white work ethic - as demonstrated by the industrious Chinese, who came in large numbers during Australia's mid-1800s Gold Rush - could subvert white interests.

Ms. Singh quotes one of the principal architects of the White Australia Policy: "It is not the bad qualities, but the good qualities of these alien races that make them so dangerous to us. It is their inexhaustible energy, their power of applying themselves to new tasks, their endurance and low standard of living that make them such competitors".

She continues, "Under the White Australia Policy, non-white students could enter Australia on temporary visas. My father had some financial support from his family but had to work during the holidays to make ends meet. He took on odd jobs that included manual labour in a tin factory and bar-tender at a working-class pub. He remembers that Indians were "few-and-far-between back then" and were often viewed as a "curious novelty" by white Australians.

"When asked why he thought Indian students in 21st century Australia were at the centre of what has been dubbed 'curry-bashing', he says it could be because of the relatively sudden influx and the perceived potential threat of an increasingly prosperous Indian community. "Never underestimate the power of perception," he says.

On 3 July, I came across this piece, "Lifting the veil on our ingrained racism", by Sandy Gifford, Professor in the School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University, and director of the La Trobe Refugee Research Centre in Australia.

Writing in The Age on 13 June 2009, Sandy Gifford says, "Australia is a racist society. There, I've said it. I've wanted to say this for the past 24 years — from the time I arrived here... Racism in Australia is pervasive, part of the fabric of everyday life and normalised in ways that render it invisible and make it one of the strongest forms of structural violence. Confronting our racism is painful, but denying it is wrong and making up excuses for specific acts of violence makes us complicit. It also makes us racist...

"It is shameful that we are pussyfooting around the current violence with responses directed at the victims — Indian students are soft targets, and that the damage is the potential loss of millions of dollars of overseas student income.

The real damage is about the loss of the kind of society we could be now and in the future. Yes, racism runs deep in my country — Australia. This is what I feel, what I believe and I, for one, have been silent far too long.

Thank you, Sandy Gifford, for your honesty - free, frank, fearless and fair.

*****

Resist the racists ... of all colours. Please, resist racism ... of any kind, anywhere, by anyone, to anyone.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, India, Sunday, 7th June 2009.

Please resist racism ... of any kind

2009-05-31T20:26:00.024+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

Students being beaten up in Australia! Were the attacks racist? Even from the initial sketchy descriptions, I was sure the attacks were racist. The news and images took me back in time to Leeds, Yorkshire, England, during 1990-93.

My visa read "Accompanying wife". Kalpana had won an open merit Commonwealth scholarship to do her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Leeds. We landed at Heathrow airport, with its arrogant immigration officers (white and Asian).

We were then dumped in a bed & breakfast cubby-hole in a cold, wet and miserably damp London. Outside, I saw the statues of the imperialist and racist, Cecil Rhodes, and the murderer of Jallianwala Bagh, Reginald Dyer. Clinging to the fire of Shahid Bhagat Singh, close to my heart, I prepared for the worst.

Now it's recession, and I can empathise with the anxiety of the jobless in Australia. For authentic information from Indian sources and students in Australia about what's happening in Melbourne and elsewhere see the website of the Federation of Indian Students of Australia (FISA), which was set up in 2002. According to FISA, more than 500 (!!!) incidents against Asians have taken place during the last seven years.

When we stayed in Leeds in 1990, the UK and USA had got together to attack Saddam Hussein, who had invaded Kuwait. Anyone, whose face even remotely resembled Saddam's with his beard, was targeted in Leeds, which is next door to Bradford, with its highly visible Asian, more precisely Pakistani Muslim population.

Within the first weeks of shopping in July 1990 at the Leeds city centre, we knew that we must avoid going out on Friday and Saturday evenings. The weekly salaries were paid in the markets, latest by 6pm. Then the favourite sport of "Paki-bashing" would begin. First, the lager louts would down some beers with a "vindaloo" or "curry". Then they would pick upon the Asians -- Indians, Pakistanis or Bangladeshis, who ran the restaurants that served the cheap vindaloo and hot curry -- all of whom were tarred with the derogatory "Paki!" brush.

That branding took me back to the Mumbai of the 1970s. Then, the Shiv Sena fanatics branded all south Indians as "madrasis" or "lungiwalas" and all Hindi-speaking north Indians as "bhaiyyas". Sadly, in the Noughties of the 21st century, the MNS goons hound north Indians across Maharashtra in a macabre repeat. (All PR and Corp Comm professionals, please note the usage "brand".)

Sheer ignorance drives racists to hate

I vaguely felt it then, but I am certain of it now: it is sheer ignorance; whether they are white teenagers in Melbourne, Victoria, of 2009; white lager louts in Leeds, Yorkshire, of 1990; or son-of-the-soil Marathi-speaking shiv sainiks in Mumbai of the 1970s; all these persons are driven to hate by sheer ignorance.

First, they are un-educated, though they may possess degrees. Second, they are afraid of the "outsider" or the "foreigner". Third, they do not act on their own and are prey to racist propaganda. They are supported by political parties or fringe groups, no matter how tiny. And above all, they have the secret sympathy and hidden support of the local police, many of whom also subscribe to the narrow blinkered mindset and harbour hate for the intrepid migrant.

Walking down the back-to-back terraces of Woodsley, Burley and Autumn Grove in Leeds, I recall the pinch-cold faces peering out from the bedrooms above. First, hit the spit of hate; then "Sorry, mate!" with a sly smirk that said, "Damn, I missed me Paki!" target. Walking down the city centre, that spit of hate would come spattering down from the West Yorkshire buses. And always the "Sorry!" with that smirk.

Outside the Leeds Kirkgate open market, standing near the bus-stop, one cold and wet, grey and muggy day, the only reason I missed getting bashed up was that I was wearing the typical black Gannon overcoat, worn by the local police, which I had bought at the second-hand Oxfam store. So the thugs mistook me for a cop!

But hundreds of Asians in England had not been as lucky as me. I have a detailed file and carefully collected clippings of racist attacks on Asians, some of them fatal. And always the police managed to cover them up. But at least the British government has admitted the existence of racism and sincerely struggles to cope with it. Now Australia must face up to the bitter truth of racism too.

Vivek Pinto, my school-mate from St Mary's, Byculla, Mumbai, who's currently in Tokyo thinks the racism in Australia is, to use a cliche, only the tip of the racial iceberg. He had sent me an NYT link long ago, before the current explosion of racism: "What Color is that Baby?" (NYT, 11 May 2009), by Bob Herbert, an op-ed columnist.

I recall with love and affection

Were all my experiences of Leeds and Yorkshire, so bitter and racist? Certainly not! I recall with love and affection:
- Rev. Paul King and the International Student Evening at Emmanuel Church every Wednesday;
- the wonderful teachers at the Fourman Nursery and Mrs. Burgess of Rosebank school, where our daughter Pallavi learned "me" English for the first time;
- the peace "Not in Our Name" marchers in London, resisting the mounted police of the rottweiler Maggie Thatcher;
- the gentle Simon Welsh and Ron Strong of Unipol Leeds, house-hunters on our behalf in Leeds;
- Ann Heilmann, annotating her feminist studies;
- the dignified old folk sing-song-ing, "Tra, la, love ..." in me open market;
- Peter Coltman's homely offer to learn on his "Typing Tutor"; and
- the always warmth of the Leeds Central Library, free with ten books to borrow at a time, where I discovered how the English dreaded Shivaji, calling him "mountain rat", and feared Kanoji Angre, branding him "pirate".

And how ever, how much, can I thank the ever-gracious Ekbote family (Sunalini, Anjali, and the late Mr. Ekbote) of Leeds for the unasked warmth with which they invited us to their hearth and held us to their hearts? And the Banhattis of York: Rajeev and Seema, Baba and the late Aaee, Ruchi and later Suhrud? For me, these two families made the "Cold and Wet" of England human and the subtle racism bearable; and re-assured me that the welcome "Heat and Dust" of India could not be far behind. ("If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" sang Shelley.)

Were all my experiences in Mumbai tarnished by the Shiv Sena? Certainly not! I recall with love, affection and solidarity:
- the wonderful comrades working with Prabhakar Sanzgiri, Madan Naik and Dr. Vivek Monteiro at Kaju Tekdi, Bhandup;
- the late "Feriwala" Francis and Bhabhi and their children Jyoti, Rajesh and the late Ladis;
- my Vistas friends at the Centre for Education and Documentation (CED), Mumbai, behind Regal Cinema and the Taj Hotel;
- the Mukadam of Manmad with his walrus moustache learning me the "bara-khadi" of Marathi; and
- my four years of rural apprenticeship in Pathardi, where I fell in love with the Marathi-speaking people.

So I survived.

So have dreaming migrants in the past. So will bold migrants today. And daring migrants to come tomorrow. We shall overcome. We are not afraid. We shall resist the cruelties and harassment, and beatings and the discrimination of the racists ... of all colours.

Other lands, other struggles, other experiences

As and when I pick up other experiences and sharing, I'll keep updating under this section. The first piece is by Aparna Das-Sadukhan, my student from SIMC, Pune, who as "Ketchup Girl" is respected for her blog, "Life and Times of a Cha Lover". She stays in Sydney, Australia, and shares her experiences and views in her post, "My two pence on curry bashing". (4 June 2009). Note the subtle racism, unlike the beating and bashing, many other Indians are receiving.

Mohan Sinha from the old Maharashtra Herald, Pune, thinks it's pure envy: despite the recession, the Indians are doing reasonably well, while the Australians suffer. See his post: "The Ugly Australian, it's just envy, mate!" (5 June 2009).

I'll keep adding more as you send them and I get them.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, India, Sunday, 31st May 2009.

Lessons my mother learned me - Part 5

2009-05-25T00:02:00.027+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

Words and songs. Words I have loved; my mother learned me to say and write them. Songs I have loved; my mother learned me to sing and hum them.

I used to hear from my uncle, the late Pius D’Cruz of Malad, Mumbai, that my mother Mary Therese D’Cruz, was a great Konkani playback singer. He said, in her heydays, she was called the “Lata Mangeshkar of the Konkani stage”.

Born on 6 October 1925 and educated in Mangalore, she came to Bombay with her brother and started to teach English in Hume High School, run by the American Marathi Mission at Byculla. My uncle finally got a job in Life Insurance Corporation. He too acted on the Konkani stage.

As a child, I had seen my mother’s song-book, from which she used to sing us songs. It was a plain ruled exercise book, the kind children use in school, and Mummy had written out the songs in her beautiful cursive hand-writing.

I wrote to my family, if any of them had seen her song-book. My sister Flavia has replied, “I have her song book and I have preserved it well. It would be of antique value now, I think. Some entries go back to 1940!” That means my mother started her song-book when she was 15 years old. As and when I lay my hands on a photo-copy of the song-book, I shall reproduce some of the songs.

*****

Here I have copied out the anthem of St Agnes College, Mangalore, where she studied and whose motto is “God is our Strength” to give you an idea of the values, which my mother held dear. She was brought up by the Apostolic Carmel (A.C) nuns, who were one of the deep and pervasive influences on her gentle yet strong character:

“God is our strength, let us commit
Our lives into His hands this day;
Trusting in Him to compass it
That we may find the perfect way.

“Fearless of foes, we cast aside
The days of ease we loved of yore;
And stand to the shock of battle-tide
Despite all trials hard and sore.

“God is our strength, why fear the foe?
His love like armour doth enfold
Our weak and wayward nature so,
That vanquished lies the tempter bold.

“Behold His arm of valour strong,
We'll cling to it in stormy fray,
Nor fear we any harm or wrong,
God is our strength, now and for aye.”

When I read the words of this anthem (I do not recall my mother singing it at home to us), I can hear the lyrical resonances of the Romantic English poets like Keats, Shelley, Byron, and Wordsworth, whom I have loved all my life.

*****

But I do remember another song that I hum to myself even today when I am down and out. My mother taught it to me. The song soothes and comforts me like a lullaby that puts a child to sleep. I can feel the caress of her soft hands and the smell of the “Afghan Snow” she used on her face and the Mysore Sandalwood soap on her body, as I sing it forlornly to myself.

The song she taught me is actually a Welsh song, “The Ash Grove”. I have taken it from the Net for your reading pleasure, though I can distinctly recall that the words my mother used to sing to us were different:

“Down yonder green valley where streamlets meander
When twilight is fading I pensively rove.
Or at the bright noontide in solitude wander
Amid the dark shades of the lonely ash grove.

“Twas there while the blackbird was cheerfully singing
I first met that dear one, the joy of my heart.
Around us for gladness the bluebells were ringing
Ah! then little thought I, how soon we should part.

“Still glows the bright sunshine o’er valley and mountain,
Still warbles the blackbird its note from the tree;
Still trembles the moonbeam on streamlet and fountain,
But what are the beauties of Nature to me?

“With sorrow, deep sorrow, my bosom is laden,
All day I go wandering in search of my love!
Ye echoes! oh tell me, where is the sweet maiden?
She sleeps ‘neath the green turf down by the Ash Grove.”

I have also discovered on 10 June 2009 some recordings on YouTube, which give a feel for the folk beauty of this Welsh song. The first is from the film "Pride and Prejudice", based on the classic novel by Jane Austen. The song Ash Grove starts at 1:02. These are the words I fondly recall my mother singing to us. Second, John Kovac plucks the song on harp, the music coming through so clearly for those who want to pick up the notes. Rosa Wol, soprano, also sings Ash Grove. You can feel the lingering beauty of the folk song by a classical singer. And then Nana Mouskouri presents her own husky version.

*****

If I recall these words and hum the tune to myself, I also remember the beautiful Hindi film songs she used to sing. Later, much later, when she was no more, my father gave me some audio-cassettes from his personal collection. Among them was his favourite song: “Tu mera chand, main teri chandni” from Dillagi (1949). The singers are Suraiyya and Shyam. Lyrics by Shakeel Badayuni and music composed by Naushad.

“Tu meraa chaand main teri chaandni.
Main teraa raag tu meri raagini.
Tu meraa chaand main teri chaandni.
Main teraa raag tu meri raagini.

Ho, nahin dil ka lagaanaa koyi dillagi, koyi dillagi,
Nahin dil ka lagaanaa koyi dillagi, koyi dillagi.

“Saath hi jeenaa saath hi marnaa,
Ulfat ki hai reet, haan, ulfat ki hai reet.
Saath hi jeenaa saath hi marnaa,
Ulfat ki hai reet, haan, ulfat ki hai reet.

Pyaar ki murli hardam gaaye teri lagan ke geet.
Pyaar ki murli hardam gaaye teri lagan ke geet.

Main teraa raag tu meri raagini.
Tu meraa chaand main teri chaandni.
Main teraa raag tu meri raagini.

“Bhool na jaanaa rut ye suhaani,
Ye din aur ye raat, haan, ye din aur ye raat.
Bhool na jaanaa rut ye suhaani,
Ye din aur ye raat, haan, ye din aur ye raat.

Jab tak chamke chaand sitaare, dekho chhoote na saath.
Jab tak chamke chaand sitaare, dekho chhoote na saath.

Tu meraa chaand main teri chaandni.
Main teraa raag tu meri raagini.
Ho, nahin dil ka lagaanaa koyi dillagi, koyi dillagi.”

Theirs was a love marriage of the 1950s, consumated along the railway line. And I can recall my mother singing this haunting 1949 number, at my father's request. She died on 2 May 1969, just 20 days before their nineteenth wedding anniversary. Tears used to roll down his eyes, as he thought about her, listening to this black and white melody. He out-lived her by 32 years and passed away in Pune on 26 March 2001.

One day, while I was browsing I chanced upon the Scottish folk-song "Roaming in the Gloaming" by Sir Harry Lauder, a 12-inch, 4-minute recording from the 1930s. I recall my mother singing the chorus lines. By and by, the tune would come to me, whenever I used to feel down and needed to get up and walk again. Click here.

I have already described how she learned me to cook. And she also learned me how to control and modulate my voice. She trained me to exercise my lungs and control my breathing so that I could “throw” my voice, while speaking and singing. I use this technique today when I give lectures, though the latest microphone and loudspeaker technology has conspired to make speakers and singers lazy, just as computers and the Internet have made journalists slothful.

*****

Gauri Gharpure has requested me, “Can we see a picture of the great lady?” In response to her query, I quote my sister’s letter again, “I have a not-so-clear picture of Mummy. Dad used to say she had an aversion for photos. Seems when you and Leslie were small (before I was born), on one happy day they were sitting and admiring both of you. Mum said, ‘We must take a family picture.’ The very next day it seems both of you came down with a bad cold and fever, which eventually led to whooping cough. Soon, she had a pair of sick babies to care for the next three months! So that’s the reason why she had this aversion for taking pictures.”

My father also told me that he used to carry a beautiful photograph of our Mummy, which she had given him in the days before they got married. He kept her photo, which showed her in pigtails, in his wallet safely in the back-pocket of his trousers. One day, his purse was picked as he was getting on to a BEST bus. And gone was the picture of our beloved mother in pigtails!

Eventually, because of the manner in which he lost her picture to a pick-pocket, my father stopped stitching back-pockets for his trousers! Even today, I do not carry a wallet, preferring instead to carry my money in re-used plastic pouches that are made to pack milk.

Because of our mother’s aversion for having her or our photographs taken, we do not have her picture. My sister has a not-so-clear picture. So Gauri, you can see the blurred picture of my mother (see the margin at the top of my blog), now that my sister has sent me the scanned picture on 27 May.

But what do I care that I do not possess a clear photograph of the mother I love? She is engraved in the deepest recesses of my heart and mind; she abides in the secret nooks and crannies of my memory; she sings her songs and hums to me as I drift off into sleep and move awake; she is imprinted in my mind’s eye; she stands fearless before me today, walks with me, her hand on my shoulder; undiminished and unvanquished by the passage of forty years.

*****

Much after I wrote this post, I chanced upon this 9 November 2008 poem,
Kya tum samjhogi ma? (Will you understand, mother?) by Smriti Mudgal, one of my SIMC students, who has already written two beautiful pieces earlier for my blog on Mumbai and a tribute to her school-teacher, the late Chitra ma'am. Smriti has a blog "Ambaree" in Hindi which I could not read till today, 4 June 2009, due to the Devanagari font. But I share the universal feelings Smriti expresses, and I am sure, that my mother though gone 40 years now would have understood.

This is the fifth and final part, concluding the series of memoirs on my mother. I await your comments and suggestions, since I intend to publish a small printed book in her memory.

Your support is my strength.
- Joe.

Pune, Monday, 25 May 2009.

Lessons my mother learned me - Part 4

2009-05-17T22:34:00.005+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

Small is beautiful, and some of the smaller lessons I learned from my mother I remember today as vividly as her love for Konkani.

For example, her lessons in cooking. My mother learned me all the basics of cooking - making rice, dal, and vegetables. And I can clean, cut and cook meat and fish. But I do not like chicken. My mother, however, took a lot of trouble in learning me patiently the intricacies of spices and grinding masalas on the traditional stone used in Mangalorean cooking.

I recall sitting with her as she measured out the spices for various dishes and I was her obedient helper for grinding masalas, cutting vegetables, salads and fruits. She used to say, "Tuka aun randap shikaitan. Tuzhem kajar zalya uprant, muzhea sunek, muzho udas yeje." (I will teach you to cook. After you get married, my daughter-in-law must remember me.)

I think she was a traditional wife, accepting a woman's duty to cook for the family and the home. But, secretly, I know she hoped for another world in the future, where women would be equal to men and work shoulder to shoulder. And for that brave new "Amrita Pritam" world, she wanted to prepare her eldest son, by learning him how to cook.

Unfortunately, by the time I got married in 1982, my mother had been gone 13 years. But I tell my wife that if I can cook, it is because of my mother. I cannot claim to be a good cook, though I can cook well enough to live without having to depend on others. However, cooking is not something I would do for a living.

*****

How do I miss her lessons, let me count the ways?

As a little boy, I remember we had just entered a new house in Nagpur. It was pitch dark and the railway khalasis, who unpacked the luggage and the boxes went away leaving us three children alone with our mother. I must have been five years old. And one of my memories is carrying a kerosene lantern at the head of a line, with my brother and sister behind me with my mother at the end. And I can hear her comforting voice behind me, "Bhein naka, Babu, aun thuzhea patlyan asan." (Do not be afraid, Babu, I am behind you.")

She is not with me today. But I do not fear the dark. For she is always behind me, taking care of the unknown.

She always called me "Babu" at home. As I grew up, I used to feel ashamed when she called me "Babu" in front of my friends. For I felt I had grown up and was too big to be called "Babu". My teachers used to call me "Joe" in school and college. But she did not mend her fond ways.

Today as I reflect on her habit of calling me "Babu", I prefer to believe it was a pet name for her eldest son, a honeymoon child, born within nine months of her marriage on 22 May 1950. Calculate the days, I was born on 5 March 1951.

Do not be afraid.

*****

One more story, my grandmother "Manjya" told me when I grew older and I will be done with this fourth part of my serial memoir. "Manjya" (why did we call our mother's mother by that name?), told me that once when I was a little baby in my mother's arms and she was expecting her second child, she had been waiting at a bus-stop.

Suddenly, she was overcome by a fainting spell. My mother handed me over to a stranger saying, "Aka sambhal." (Take care of him.) And fainted.

Even today, when I see a pregnant woman carrying a baby, I recall my mother at that bus-stop and see myself being carried by my mother. Maybe such a story stirs in me compassion for the weak and helpless. Maybe it is such a story that inspires me to trust complete strangers. For didn't my mother entrust me to the care of a stranger that day? Is that where our values are born?

Trust people, even strangers. Help the weak.

*****

How I miss the lessons my mother learned me?

Next Sunday, in the final and concluding part of this 5-part series on my mother, I shall write about the simple songs my mother sang me, and the great singing my mother learned me.

Your support is my strength.
- Joe.

Pune, Sunday, 17th May 2009.

Lessons my mother learned me - Parts 2, 3

2009-05-10T21:26:00.007+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

Many of you, and even some relatives, were taken aback by the exclusive and fierce passion with which, according to my description in Part-1 of this memoir, my mother loved and lived the Konkani language.

A few words of background about my mother tongue may put her love for Konkani into perspective for you. Konkani used to be one of the “persecuted” languages. The Portuguese, who ruled Goa ruthlessly for nearly five centuries, proscribed and banned Konkani; they hounded the Konkani-speaking peoples mercilessly.

Soon the sweet and mellifluous language with its song-song intonations and gentle lexicon (recall the great dance and song from the Raj Kapoor film “Bobby”) was driven into hiding, degraded into being uttered by maid-servants, cooks, farmers, labourers and lowly, humble menial folk.

A few wise and learned Gaud Saraswat Brahmins, both Christian and Hindu, who were aware of Konkani’s ancient linguistic heritage, nursed the language in the private secrecy of their personal homes.

Severe persecution (Goans were skinned and flayed alive) and conversions also forced the Konkani-speaking peoples to flee and migrate on a mass scale. This is the beginning of the Konkani Diaspora; still going on, though for entirely different reasons now.

With her sensitive heart, perceptive mind and vast reading, my mother inherited this Konkani legacy and was determined to preserve Konkani, even if it was only in her own family and home.

Our family, the D’cruzes and the Pintos, knows that my mother’s ancestors, mostly with the Rodrigues surname, moved away from the taluka of Pernem, in Bardez, northern Goa, and found refuge and asylum in Mangalore more than two hundred years ago.

The Goan origins on my father’s side are unclear, though there are various unconfirmed hearsays that trace the Pinto line to the region of Cuncoliem, in Salcette, southern Goa.

The Konkani-speaking peoples, scattered throughout the world, were overjoyed when Goa was liberated from the cruel Portuguese colonialists in 1961. Goa became a state in 1987. After a long struggle, Konkani was declared the official language of Goa.

The sweet sing-song Konkani ‘bhas’ could now raise her shy head and walk, freed from official persecution; and out of the suppressive shadow of its sister languages, the dominant and arrogant Marathi, as well as the tolerant and protective Kannada, and come into her own.

*****

This background of persecution, dear reader, is necessary to appreciate why my mother, a teacher who spoke fluent English and an ardent student of history, barred us her children from speaking English at home. She knew that only under her own care, supervision, protection and vigilance; within the four walls of her own home where she reigned supreme with the consent of our father; completely out of reach and insulated from the cruel persecution of the State and the other dominant languages, her own tongue could be nurtured and survive – among her children.

During 1956-63, the lovely and quiet years I spent as a little boy in the railway towns of Jabalpur, Amla, Nagpur, Solapur and Manmad, my mother was able to imbibe in me love for and intimacy with Konkani. She is gone forty years, snatched from us. But ‘her’ Konkani voice abides with me like a holy picture, which even Death cannot steal like a thief in daylight.

I speak Konkani comfortably and with ease even today, because of her diligent ‘home schooling’ till I was 18 years old, and the occasional practice during langourous visits to our relatives in Mangalore. My mother was not, nor can I be, a fanatic supporter of Konkani, come what may.

Like her and my father, I am aware of the innate weaknesses, even among those who claim to be her protectors, for sometimes even ‘the fence may eat the crop’. But I can defend ‘amchi bhas’ from those who seek to confine and arrest her as a dialect of Marathi; or others who look down upon her, because she does not have one unique script.

How come then, you may ask, we studied in English medium schools? Sheer expediency. There were no Konkani medium schools in Mangalore, so my father and mother studied in Kannada medium schools, only later going to English medium colleges, my mother to St Agnes and my father to St Aloysius, both in Mangalore.

My father was working in the Signals & Telecommunication (S & T) Department of the Central Railways. So we were put in English medium schools, initially railway schools and then Jesuit or Convent schools, so that we did not ‘suffer’ when my father got transferred, which could be anywhere and without prior intimation, to a region where the medium of instruction in schools was Marathi or Hindi.

Later, when I got married to Kalpana, a Pune girl whose mother tongue is Marathi, it was natural for me that our daughter Pallavi, like my wife, studied in a Marathi medium school, with ‘semi-English’ for the science subjects. The school is called His Highness Chintamanrao Patwardhan (HHCP) High School for Girls, better known as ‘Huzurpaga’ (‘paga’, a stable, for the horses of ‘huzur’, his highness) located on Laxmi Road, Pune.

*****

Besides an abiding love for Konkani, my mother’s affair with that ancient language (with so many words of its corpus taken directly from Sanskrit) also learned me another lesson: the strong and mighty should protect the weak and meek. Throughout my career as a working journalist and a working editor, I have single-mindedly, openly and proudly championed minority issues. Let me take one example.

Encouraged and supported by my veteran seniors – S.D Wagh, Nalini Gera, Harry David, Taher Shaikh and Y.V. Krishnamurthy – as well as my warm colleagues – Vijay Lele, D. Sanjay, Ashok Gopal, Gouri Agtey-Athale, Usha Somayaji, Huned Contractor, Babu Kalyanpur and Mohan Sinha – in the thriving (till the late 90s) but now defunct Maharashtra Herald, I used to write, edit and rewrite stories as part of our ‘community’ beat, revealing the non-Maharashtrian, non-Marathi-speaking face of Pune.

Since 1983, we unearthed the Malayalis, Kannadigas, Tulus, Telugus, Tamils of south India in the bylanes of Rasta and Somwar Peth; the Bengalis and Oriyas in Khadki; the Gujaratis and Rajasthanis spread across the old city peths; the Hindi-speaking uttar bharatiya ‘biradari’ of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar; the Punjabis and Sindhis (to whom the Sangtanis and Geras belong).

On this journey of discovering Pune, the spirit of my mother accompanied me, urging me to record the cultural silhouettes of the migrant communities, dig up their early history, their joys and sorrows as various communities arrived, struck roots and settled down … in a foreign land.

Aided by my mother’s love for Konkani culture, I could gain insights into the stirring motivations and driving forces that gave birth to and sustained the various community organisations, associations and clubs, which enrich the ancient city of Pune, providing an opportunity for the majority of Marathi-speaking people an opportunity to learn that India is, in reality, a throbbing and pulsating “unity in diversity”.

I soon realised that, try as they might and would, no religious fanatic or language chauvinist or opportunist manipulator, intoxicated by political ambition and poisoned by the resurgent ideology of a mythical golden past, could dare threaten the strong bonds laid down deep and watered daily by the lively communities, who rightfully and justly may call Pune – their very own.

*****

Yes, my mother loved Konkani ‘exclusively’ when she sensed concrete threats to her existence. But she also loved all the other languages of India and the world ‘inclusively’, when she tasted their sweet literature.

I repeat what I wrote in Part-1 of this memoir. “I see my mother in a kimono dress, sitting by a lighted window with the soft light falling across her face in profile. A book or magazine is in her hands and she is reading, head bent and often glancing around to keep an eye on us, her children. At other times, she is in the kitchen cooking, softly humming to herself some Konkani “cantara” (songs). But mostly she is reading, and sometimes, writing letters.”

So she recognised that her eldest son was, like her, also a passionate lover of the written and printed word and introduced me to the world of the universal imagination.

From among the hundreds of writers, I cite a few:
Russian: Dostevesky, Chekhov, Tolstoy and Pushkin;
Hindi: Munshi Premchand, Bhishma Sahni, Amrita Pritam;
French: Balzac, Maupassant, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola and Voltaire;
Bengali: Rabindranath Tagore;
Americans: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost and Walt Whitman;
Malayali: Vaikom Mohammed Bashir;
. . . and hundreds of other obsessed creatures like herself, story-tellers and weavers of books.

If you scrutinise this partial list, you may spot the defiance and rebellion in the names, their secular and universal feeling for all humans, the longing for peace and compassion for the poor and suffering.

These authors and their writings remain my companions, long after my mother passed away suddenly 40 years ago; but not before placing me gently into their safe laps and clasping their hands.

*****

That’s all for my weekly column, this Sunday. Parts 4 and 5 of this memoir on my mother, Amy Pinto (nee Mary Therese D’Cruz) of Mangalore, Karnataka, will appear on the coming Sundays, 17 and 24 May.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, Sunday, 10 May 2009.

NOTICE: Sorry for not posting this Sunday

2009-05-07T10:11:00.004+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

"Due to circumstances beyond my control, I could not post the second part of memoirs about my mother. I regret the inconvenience caused to my readers."

This is the standard excuse one usually gives, when one misses a column. But such an opening paragraph is a cliche and, hence, would be opaque and dishonest. So listen to what happened.

I am involved with a teacher training program, which started on 1 May and ends on 23 May. By 3 pm on Sunday, I had written only 238 words, so I could not post an incomplete piece. I was thinking of writing a notice, letting you know that my column would not appear this Sunday, but I kept putting it off. Today is Thursday and I can see no hope of completing my column. Since this week is nearly through, I have decided to post both the second and third parts on Sunday, 10 May.

Those of you who follow my blog faithfully and regularly must be disappointed; I apologise to them.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, Thursday, 7th May 2009.

Lessons my mother learned me - Part 1

2009-04-26T23:32:00.008+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

Our mothers … and our fathers, are the most beautiful persons in the world to us. They are the kindest and the warmest. They may not be the wisest or the most intelligent, but they are the most caring. We are the only people that matter to them. Our parents think about us and feel for us like no one else. And our mothers are with us … all the time.

I imagine a part of the brain of our mothers is always switched on to their children. We may be at school or college; at work, travelling; in another part of the world; accessible by phone or remote and out of reach. But we, their own children, are held in the fondness of the hearts, cling close in the warmth of the hugs, fondled dear in the minds – of our mothers. We are the most beautiful persons in the world to our mothers … and our fathers.

Forty years after her death, my mother is the most beautiful person in my life. Saturday, the second of May this year, will mark her 40th death anniversary. Many of you who responded to my piece, “Along the line, at railway gate No. 58”, expressed an interest to know something more about my mother, since I had mentioned that she was known as the “Lata Mangeshkar of the Konkani stage”. Most of my relatives, whose parents knew my mother well, would also be happy to read about her, since they too knew her as children.

I was 18 years old and had just finished the second year of my B.Sc. in Chemistry at St Xavier’s College, when she left us on 2 May 1969. We were staying in a first floor flat at the Officers Quarters, along the railway line at Dadar (East), Mumbai. She had not been well for some time, and used to regularly visit a family doctor friend on the sixth floor. That day too, she walked out of our home in front of us like on any other day, telling us sitting there in the front living room that she was going to meet Dr Shrivastava.

A little while later, somebody screamed to tell us that she was lying on the ground below our balcony. It was an accident; she had vertigo, what is called “falling” sickness, I have it too, she must have gone in to the balcony and fallen.

The most beautiful and kindest person in my life had left us.

When I look back after these 40 years, how do I see her? I see her in a kimono dress, sitting by a lighted window with the soft light falling across her face in profile. A book or magazine is in her hands and she is reading, head bent and often glancing around to keep an eye on us, her children. At other times, she is in the kitchen cooking, softly humming to herself some Konkani “cantara” (songs). But mostly she is reading, and sometimes, writing letters.

From stories of her childhood told to us by her and our relatives, Mary Therese D’Cruz, the eldest daughter of Pauline and Joseph D’Cruz, resident of Urva, Mangalore, in South Kanara district of present-day Karnataka went to Lady Hill School and St Agnes College in Mangalore. Born on 6 October 1925, Mary had two brothers, Pius and the late John (who died of typhoid at the age of 14).

My grand-father was a “writer” in a coffee plantation and my grand-mother took care of the house. They were not poor not well off. I recall my mother’s resourcefulness at getting by with whatever we had; not cribbing, whining or moaning; and making do.

Mary passed out from St Agnes College, Mangalore, with History and English. So you can see where my passion for the two subjects comes from. She not only “learned me lessons” in English, but also the history of English literature. But for all her excellence at English, to her it was always and is today for me a “foreign” language.

Her one and only passion in life was Konkani – the language, the songs, the literature, the culture. She knew English well and spoke it fluently; we had been put in English medium schools for my father was a “transferable” railwayman. But she noticed, during 1956-63 when we were at Jabalpur, Nagpur, Solapur and Manmad, all railways towns on the Central Railway section, that we tended or tried to speak in Hindi or English at home.

I remember her swift response with gratitude and reverence today. It was strong, fierce and clear: she would reply to us if and only if we spoke to her in Konkani; otherwise she pretended she was deaf and had not heard us at all. We had no choice but to speak at home in Konkani. Our father too was happy with this rule, for he too was a lover of languages, not only Konkani but as many languages as you could learn.

When she referred to English she called it “porkiyo”, which meant “foreign”. When she referred to other languages like Hindi or Marathi, the languages spoken around us during those days, she called them “thanchi bhas” which meant “their language”.

Only Konkani to her was “amchi bhas” which meant “our language”. To her, the world was simple and divided into two parts, “them” and “us”. Us is Konkani.

*****

The next four parts of these memoirs on my mother will appear on the next four consecutive Sundays, 3, 10, 17, and 24 May. Make your comments here itself before you move to the next part of this column.

Horrifying "un-coverage" of sexual assault

2009-04-26T22:30:00.005+05:30

The sensational "un-coverage" of the sexual assault on an international student from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, has generated wide discussion.

The most immoral of the reporting has been in the Mumbai Mirror, one of a family of tabloids published by the Times of India group. As an editor and working journalist since 1983 and a teacher of journalism in Pune since 1987, I am horrified by this reportage, which violates all the ethics of journalism. The reporters who covered the story, the sub-editors who allowed it to pass, and the editor in whose name the paper is published, deserve to be severely censured by the community of professional journalists.

Among the many protests against the sickening coverage is an article entitled, “Who is the Sleaziest of Them All”, written by Shilpa Phadke, a sociologist, researcher and pedagogue; Anjali Monteiro and KP Jayasankar, documentary film makers and academics, who teach and research in the area of media and cultural studies.

The protest features in “Ultra Violet” a superb blog taken out by a community of young feminists blogging on various issues, challenges, and triumphs that affect women in India today. Ultra Violet, in turn, is an initiative of the Hengasara Hakkina Sangha, a women’s rights resource centre. You may write to them at: ultraviolet.editor[at]gmail.com

I am not actively attached to any publication today and so I am unable to take up this issue as a professional journalist from inside a newspaper. However, through my blog “Against the Tide” I want to raise my voice, instigate and rouse each and every one of my students (past and present), friends and colleagues everywhere, to completely familiarise themselves with the various issues at stake.

We must protest in whatever we can, through professional bodies, signing petitions, and campaigning inside offices and even on the streets, against the scandal-mongering coverage and sensationalism that is becoming rampant today. This is a part of the rotting disease that is destroying the core of journalism in India.

Please keep up the pressure and build a strong movement among journalists for responsible reporting.

Your support is our strength,
- Joe.

Pune, Sunday, 26 April 2009.

My father-in-law, the public intellectual

2009-04-19T23:34:00.010+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

Thank you all for your warm and uplifting responses and comments to the tribute I paid to my father-in-law. Today, Sunday, 19 April, the late Prof. K.L. Joshi’s family held a condolence meeting at his residence, where members of the family and two of his specially-invited friends paid respects to his dear memory.

Listening to the many who silently wept or wiped away tears, as a few spoke about him, I could sense the enormous impact this simple man had made by the example of his own life to so many lives in so many different ways.

A cousin brother, who was brought up by Prof Joshi, recalled a small incident of how he got one whole rupee to go for a picnic. A cousin sister remembered how carefully Prof Joshi calculated household expenses. Prof Joshi had sent his three cousins (including her) along with their mother, for a one-month holiday to their native place, Anjarle on the Konkan coast. But he warned them that they would have to stay put with life in a village, though they were used to the comforts of Pune, and that they could not, for any reason whatsoever, return before one month had elapsed -- because the Rs 90, the travel fare, was all that he could afford to give them and that the return fare would be paid by their "mama" (maternal uncle).

But it was one of Prof Joshi’s two friends, Prof Shirolkar, who touched me most deeply and profoundly by his narration of the pervasive ideological influence that Prof Joshi exercised on him and others. You will recall I had described my father-in-law as a “public intellectual.” But I could not have known then how accurate I was in my estimation.

Prof. Shirolkar told the gathered family that Prof Joshi was a confidant and guide to eminent political leaders in Maharashtra like Mohan Dharia and N.D. Patil; that the engineering teachers in Pune consulted Prof Joshi regularly regarding their organisational issues; that even as a student leader in the pre-independence days, "K.L." would be concerned about what his friends were reading; that even today he recalled how Prof Joshi gave him a copy of “What is Marxism?” by Emile Burns. Another cousin sister recalled that Prof Joshi gave her a copy of Shyamchi Aai (Shyam's Mother) by Sane Guruji as "bhau-beej" on Raksha Bandhan as a token of his brotherly love.

Not surprising then, that with my own unabashed love for ideology, I should be drawn to this gentle and warm father-in-law of mine! His children and relatives recalled how he practised what he preached and his favourite line, "I say what I mean, and I mean what I say."

You will be glad to know that the reminiscences by his family members and friends were so many, so varied and so detailed in their description, that the project to publish a biography of Prof K.L. Joshi is sure to become a reality.

There is one category of comment that I would like to address. Should I have been so open and candid and honest in this personal memoir about my private relationship with my father-in-law on the public platform of the Internet blog? Some felt I was needlessly submitting to public scrutiny and judgment the story of my relationship that should have been restricted to a small family or friend circle.

I prefer to believe I was correct in what I did; that is why I have continued my memoir in the same vein. I would like to listen to your views too.

That’s all, this Sunday.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, Sunday, 19 April 2009.

Life before death, with my father-in-law

2009-04-12T21:43:00.004+05:30

We do not choose our parents or our bosses. Our parents we cannot know; our bosses select us. But we may choose our friends and partners. So if I had a choice again to marry, I would choose to marry my wife Kalpana. But this time round, I would have one more reason than that I love her: I knew and loved her father too.

Prof. K.L. Joshi, my father-in-law, died yesterday, Saturday, 11 April 2009, after completing 87 years the day before, on 10 April. A gentle peaceful man, he was a wonderful human being, a political activist to the core and a world-class public intellectual.

Fond of mathematics, Prof Joshi taught science and technology at the College of Engineering, Pune (COEP) from 1955 until his retirement in 1980 as its Head of the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications.

When I first met him in 1981, as Kalpana’s father, I was surprised that he was glad I was a political activist and that too associated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist)! Himself a socialist and close to the communists, the socialists and the Gandhians, he was concerned that I did not have a full-time job.

One of his first questions to me was, “Will you take up a full-time job, after you get married?” My yes reassured him. And when I joined Maharashtra Herald on 2 May 1983 as a sub-editor, he was happy I kept my word, and was not bothered that my monthly salary of 600 rupees was less than what his daughter earned.

The multi-faceted life and work of Prof. K.L. Joshi, fondly called “K.L.” by his friends, deserves a full-length biography. Here I will describe a few reasons why I grew to love him.

He was a daring freedom-fighter, having served a prison term in Yerawada Jail, Pune, during the 1942 Quit India movement. In his room, there is a picture of the 20 year-old “K.L.” taken just after he got out of jail. He does not face the camera; I like to imagine he is looking into the distance at the India he and his comrades are fighting for.

“Anna”, as we called him in the family, touched the individual lives of many, drawing them close to him. He did this not by words of affection but by the simple example of his own life and kind deeds. Others may tell their own stories of him. I will tell you mine.

When I proposed to Kalpana, it was not easy for her “Brahmin” family to say yes. I went through an astonishing “interview” by her relatives, so that they could get to know the “Catholic” boy. I have put the words Brahmin and Christian in double inverted commas, because neither were they traditional Pune “Brahmins” nor was I the usual “Catholic” boy.

One person who accepted me without reservation was Prof. K. L. Joshi. His only questions were practical and those that any father of any eligible girl has a right to ask. For his unqualified support, I always loved him. We had our differences, especially on ideological issues, but he was most gracious and courteous when he disagreed with me. He respected differences and did not wish to offend and lose a friend.

I recall an interview of Paul Eddington, the actor who played the role of the British Prime Minister in the TV series, “Yes, Minister”. In Face to Face with Jeremy Isaacs, a week before he died of cancer, Paul says he would like to be remembered by the words, “He did very little harm.” This would be a fitting epitaph for Prof. K.L. Joshi.

In a Pune that is hide-bound with the most covert, sophisticated and brazen forms of caste and class prejudice, he was a rare example of honest humanity, refusing to submit to pressure from any quarter. For him, merit always came above all else.

His contributions on various selection panels and boards, ranging from the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) to the college or job interview panel, are outstanding and dearly remembered by thousands for their impartiality, fearlessness and respect for merit – and nothing else.

He did not believe in life after death. He practised his beliefs in his own life, by refusing to have any religious ceremonies for his sons or daughters. He professed his beliefs with his grand-children, prepared to argue, "Does God exist?” For him, there was only this one life to be lived fully on earth – before death. A Gandhian socialist, he believed all people everywhere are good and deserve to be treated so. I like to believe if heaven is real, it is because it is possible to create a heaven on earth.

When he left at eighty-seven,
Fearlessly,
No life after death.
In us, he left his heaven,
Life before death.

That’s all, this Sunday.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, Sunday, 12 April 2009.

How Alistair Cooke describes “Six Men”

2009-04-05T16:38:00.011+05:30

My dear students, friends, colleagues,

Description is an attitude and technique that is losing ground. Under pressure from news that is "breaking" 24 hours on TV, Indian newspaper editors delude themselves, "Which readers want to read stale reports the next morning.?"

So they abandon the report, filled with crisp facts (checked and re-verified) as well as precise description (based on accurate observation). Instead, opinionated features -- a hotch-potch of news, analysis, photographs and computer graphics, wallowing in the slush of wishy adjectives and slime of washy adverbs -- tell the readers what to think.

I have resisted this silly tide and consistently risen to the defence of the old-fashioned report and the tribe of reporters, who are likely to becoming an endangered species of journalist.

Alistair Cooke belongs to that “good and great” tradition of British journalists, who excelled at facts and description. Born in 1908 and settling down in America in 1937, a few years after the Great Depression and a few years before World War II, Alistair Cooke broadcast his “Letter from America” over the BBC for 58 years. Cooke died in 2004 at the age of 95.

In this column, I reproduce an extract from his book, “Six Men” (Bodley Head, 1977), in which Cooke wrote “character studies” of six men. To illustrate my point about the need for description, my extract is of Cooke’s meeting with H.L. Mencken (page 96 of the 1980 Penguin paperback edition):

“I met him first in the back room of Schellhase’s restaurant and when I arrived he was sitting there behind a stein of beer with A.D. Emart of the Baltimore Sunpapers. For some reason, having to do with my preconception of a scourge calling sinners to repentance, I suppose I expected to see a florid giant, the local Balzac swivelling his bulk to bark at lackadaisical waiters. But he was no more conspicuous than any local shopkeeper.”

In this paragraph, please note Cooke’s three sketches of Mencken: his preconception of “a scourge calling sinners to repentance” and expectation to see “a florid giant, the local Balzac swivelling his bulk to bark at lackadaisical waiters”, dispelled by the reality of a man “no more conspicuous than any local shopkeeper.” Cooke continues to observe meticulously:

“What I saw was a small man so short in the thighs that when he stood up he seemed smaller than when he was sitting down. He had a plum pudding of a body and a square head stuck on it with no intervening neck. His brown hair was parted exactly in the middle, and the two cowlicks touched his eyebrows.

“He had very light blue eyes small enough to show the whites above the irises; which gave him the earnestness of a gas jet when he talked, an air of resigned incredulity when he listened, and a merry acceptance of the human race and all its foibles when he grinned.

“He was dressed like the owner of a country hardware store. (On ceremonial occasions, I saw later, he dressed like a plumber got up for church.) For all his seeming squatness, his movements were precise and his hands in particular were small and sinewy.”

Within 232 words, Cooke describes “the private face of a most public man whom few people could stop to look at for the fire and smoke of his old reputation of a scourge calling sinners to repentance”.

We are lucky there was no TV in Mencken's "under-whelming" days, or else a free-marketeering editor would have chopped off Cooke's description, arguing that a few close-up camera shots had already caught Mencken on the small screen in an interview the previous day!!!

The 207-page paperback “Six Men” has Cooke's memoirs on:

1. Charles Chaplin – The One and Only
2. King Edward VIII – The Golden Boy
3. H.L. Mencken – The Public and the Private Face
4. Humphrey Bogart – Epitaph for a Tough Guy
5. Adlai Stevenson – The Failed Saint
6. Bertrand Russell – The Lord of Reason.

I urge you to grab anything by Alistair Cooke that you can lay your hands, eyes or ears on.

Please comment on this post, before you proceed to the rest of my column.

As you wrestle, watch your words

2009-04-05T16:26:00.012+05:30

One of my school-mates from Mumbai and now in Tokyo, Vivek Pinto, regularly sends me links that may be useful to my students. Henceforth, I will include themin my column. Here are two articles about John Hope Franklin, the black historian, who died on 25 March 2009 at the age of 94, having reshaped the scholarship of the Jim Crow South and given birth to African-American history with books such as “From Slavery to Freedom,” “The Militant South, 1800-1860” and his ground-breaking work on free Negroes.

See Editorial “John Hope Franklin,” The New York Times, Brent Staples, 26 March 2009 and “John Hope Franklin, Scholar and Witness ," Peter Applebome, The New York Times, 28 March 2009.

In our search for excellence as professionals, we “wrestle” with troublesome problems. Here is a helpful article: “Words to Watch," by Philip B. Corbett, The New York Times, 1 April 2009. I am including this link at Vivek Pinto’s suggestion because my students may also benefit.

“After Deadline” examines questions of grammar, usage and style encountered by writers and editors at the NYT. It is adapted from a weekly newsroom critique, overseen by Philip B. Corbett, the deputy news editor who is also in charge of the NYT style manual. Corbett says, “The goal is not to chastise, but to point out recurring problems and suggest solutions.”

Please respond with your suggestions, questions and doubts. Above all, I welcome disagreements with the words of Voltaire: “I disagree with every word you say. But I shall defend to my death your right to say it.” Last week’s column, “No! No!” to Nano” stirred strong emotions and stronger language. Keep it coming.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, Sunday, 5 April 2009.

Writing, editing and re-writing are different

2009-03-30T09:56:00.003+05:30

My dear students, friends and colleagues,

Just when I thought newspaper reporters were becoming an “endangered species” having been swamped and run over by video journalists, my dear friend and colleague Vinita Deshmukh, the editor of one of India’s gutsiest “little weeklies” – the Intelligent Pune – has won the Chameli Devi Jain award for 2008-09.

One of India’s most honest reporters with a conscience, Vinita has fiercely been swimming “against the tide” of celebrity and page 3 journalism. She is known by an enormous body of work, along with the late Prakash Kardaley, while she was at the Indian Express in Pune during 1987-2006. Her editorial work at “Citizen’s Voice” is part of what is called “civic and development journalism” in the syllabi of journalism courses.

Along with the Maharashtra Herald of Pune (estd. 1963), where I started my full-time career in journalism as a sub-editor in 1983 and left in 1996 as an assistant editor, the Pune edition of the Indian Express took up civic issues and campaigns boldly and consistently. Vinita is part of that great tradition of local reporting that is on par with the finest national or international reportage.

Get in touch with Vinita Deshmukh on facebook or by email: vinitapune@gmail.com

*****

With this opening tribute to Vinita, let me proceed. This column consists of two posts. Heeding Gauri, Baruk, the Princess, and others I have arranged them as follows for your reading and commenting convenience:

1. An element of editing: This time on “The difference between writing and editing”.
2. A think-piece, elaborating upon the title of my blog, “Against the Tide”. The inaugural think-piece is entitled, “No no to Nano! Shun the Nano!” Ending with a tail-piece.

With this introduction, I continue with the next post of my column:

The difference between writing and editing

2009-03-30T09:53:00.001+05:30

In his classic, “How to write” (reprinted by Jaico), the Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock says most people confuse writing with putting words on paper. When you have not thought hard enough and have little to say, no wonder the writing is difficult and you ramble. Writing, he says, is mostly thinking and only a tiny part is actually spent putting pen to paper or typing at a keyboard.

Being able to write implies wanting to think. So is it surprising that those who have interesting thoughts are also likely to be the ones who write well. But while thinking up racy plots or an argument may be a necessary condition to writing, it is not sufficient. For you have to have the correct technique and skills to describe your thoughts or narrate what happens to your characters.

If writing has got so much to do with thinking, then what about editing? Because editing comes after writing, editing also means re-thinking or re-writing. Some gifted writers may revise by themselves. But most are so washed out after expressing ourselves or gathering the facts of a story, that we prefer having another to do the cleaning up, the tightening and tidying up, touching up or boiling down that includes the job of editing – before the piece is served up to the reader.

Editing, as communication, is different from writing, which concerns expression. The complete and exclusive focus on the reader is what distinguishes the editor from the writer. Not that the writer is self-indulgent and ignores the reader. But the editor allows the reader to constantly breathe down her neck, as she sits to edit or re-write.

Just one example of a guide to good writing and editing: the classic “UPI Stylebook”, the authoritative handbook for writers, editors and news directors, says United Press International (UPI) journalists have, since 1942, perfected the craft of writing news “for the ear”. Billy Ferguson, former managing director of UPI, who compiled the UPI stylebook of 1992, is acknowledged as the creator of the broadcast writing style and a master of writing “for the ear.” Learn anything by him and you have a treasure.

I shall return often to the theme of writing and editing. I included a piece by Baruk Feddabonn, “Should you read poetry?” because I wanted journalists to be as sensitive as poets.

Comment, before you proceed to the next post of this column.

“No no to Nano! Shun the Nano!”

2009-03-30T09:46:00.003+05:30

I do not hesitate to suggest to those who feel proud about the achievements of the Nano, “Reconsider whether your pride is misplaced”. For, the Nano may make affordable the dreams of middle-class people to own a car. And by doing that, the Nano provides middle-class people the opportunity to abandon the alternative of public transport.

The dislike of the middle-classes to rub shoulders with the sweating masses on buses or trains is legendary. The Nano may create the illusion of escape.

The Nano is, first and last, about private versus public transport. At a time, when the world is going through a climate crisis, making private or personal transport affordable should be the last thing on our minds. We must concentrate on making public transport affordable and comfortable.

That is why I go against the tide and say, “No no to Nano! Shun the Nano!”

I have nothing against the Tatas, who make the Nano. The struggle is ideological and scientific. The inevitable result of an affordable Nano, like all cheap private cars, will be traffic chaos, congestion and misery.

It will not do to loosen our belt by widening roads; with more cars, we get fatter. Mother Earth will be worse off, because the Nano will increase pollution by increasing the cars on roads.

Go against the tide. Join the group "Horn O.K. Nano" on facebook. Make fun of the Nano, mock it, do anything that will help ordinary folk to resist the temptation of buying it.

*****

TAIL-PIECE:

If you see “My Values & Beliefs” I have listed, “People … before Profit”. That is inspired by Noam Chomsky. Now an umbrella organisation called “Put People First” has taken out a huge march in London on 28 March, opposing the same old measures to recover from the recession, which actually caused it in the first place.

*****

Many of you are still sending comments to my personal gmail account, which I use to send you an alert. Please comment on the post itself, as that is a permanent record for all to see.

It is a great pleasure to keep in touch with you and read the lively walls, messages and notes on facebook. They suggest topics for my columns.

Please keep in touch with your detailed comments and emails.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, Monday, 30 March 2009.

"Shun the fashionable; always be in style."

2009-03-21T20:45:00.020+05:30

My dear students,

Thank you for the overall response to my blog so far. Besides your usual praise that never fails to draw out gratitude from deep inside me, as an affectionate teacher or loving friend and colleague, I am happy to notice the points each of you have singled out for mention in your comments.

Most of you have, however, chosen to comment to me directly on my personal account. And so have, deliberately or unknowingly, deprived the others of listening to your voices! Where-ever possible, I have taken the liberty to cut and paste the relevant portions and posted them as your comments to my post, but under my name.

Henceforth, I have decided to post a regular column every week. I shall post it on Sunday, so that you may read it "araam-se" during the week.

Here is an outline of the contents that I propose to cover:

1. An element of editing. (This post has the long-delayed piece on cliches).
2. Comments in passing about what I have been reading and thinking.
3. Elaborating upon the title of the blog - Against the Tide.
4. Bits about books or blogs I've read or you ought to read.
5. A think-piece - listening to the blowing wind or falling rain.
6. A tail-piece, in the style of the old-fashioned column.

Why am I adopting this format? Because I have tired of having to alert you about my posts. I shall, however, persist in alerting each of you who are so kind to comment on my blog or email me.

So here goes.

*****

Cliches: "Shun the fashionable; always be in style."

Cliches are over-used or stereo-typed or stock-in-trade fragments, expressions, phrases, idioms, or sometimes even entire sentences. Lately, examples of entire intros and paragraphs have also emerged as clichés. Video journalists, desperate to create an identity for themselves that is distinct from plain ordinary journalists, are particularly susceptible to cliches.

Five months ago, on 23 October 2008, Gauri Gharpure from the batch of 2007, Department of Journalism and Communication, University of Pune, was the first to ask me about “over-used cliches that can be done away with”.

To say over-used cliches is a redundancy, Gauri, like free gift or brutal murder. I’ll take up redundancy, another media affliction, in a later post. But here I will address the unrecognised need to avoid clichés “like the plague” (itself a cliché).

By the way, read Gauri in her thoughtful blog called “Life Rules”. I was inspired to start “Against the Tide” after I read her blog. I said to myself, “If Gauri can do it, why can’t I?” (cliché) So here I am blogging away “to glory” (cliché).

“At the outset” (cliché), I have unearthed the evergreen Eric Partridge for you, my dear students, because his book, “A Dictionary of Cliches” (first published by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1940, the fifth edition came out in 1978) is a classic in the field of writing clearly.

Most of the authority with which we claim to speak on clichés can be traced to Eric Partridge (1894-1979), the New Zealand lexicographer who settled in England. I have also picked samples of cliches from my own careful reading of how we (journalists and readers) write daily in India.

By slipping or “sinning gracelessly” into a cliché, like Eric Partridge confesses, we mindlessly repeat the evidence that we are “slack and lazy” in our attitude to speech and writing and that we do not care to speak or write in a “fresh and vigorous” way.

This is THE crime writers and reporters commit when they use a cliché or sub-editors commit when they let a cliché escape their scrutiny as gate-keepers.

*****

Some examples follow that I have culled from books and the papers.

“Generally speaking” (cliché) may be dropped from the start of a sentence, without loss. And “last but not the least” (cliché) may be omitted, as we reach the end of our say. Try it.

The ISRO journey of Chandrayaan-1 to the Moon had its “fair share” (cliché) of tired expressions. Each exploit of the moon spacecraft became the “defining moment”(cliche) in the Indian space programme. Where has the serviceable “milestone” gone?

The corporate world has borrowed “milestone” from the surveying, mapping and road engineers and used it to hype company profiles. But we, journalists, have abandoned “milestone” which is used and understood by ordinary people. Reclaim the milestone – like the pink chaddis are out to reclaim the night from male bullies.

The adverb “most arguably” (cliché) in its superlative form is one of the most abused. An expression like “the mother of all …” (cliché) has become the mother of all clichés. Widely used by western journalists to describe the war against Saddam’s Iraq: “the mother of all battles”, this mother cliché has caught on. All you have to do is fill in the blanks and, unlike the "motherless child" of Stevie Wonder, "lo and behold" (cliche) we have another still-born cliche.

Another all-time cliche from Partridge: “In this day and age” or “at this point in time” becomes simply “at present” or “nowadays” or “now”. A company has the catch-line, “Know. Now.” below their logo and another says, “Make the most of now”.

Cliches from Associated Press Guide to News Writing have also been collected by Rene J. Cappon. Click here. From this list pick out the cliches that you are most likely to abuse as youwrite. And then, "Avoid them, like the plague".

*****

Robert M. Knight in his masterly “The Craft of Clarity: A Journalistic Approach to Good Writing” (Blackwell, U.K.; Surjeet Publications, First Indian Reprint, 2003, Rs. 150/-) calls an entire chapter, “On Being Original”. Fifteen pages with lots of examples, all from American English, but useful; and some exercises with suggested rewrites; also a list of seven reference books. Add Partridge to that list.

I reproduce a warning from Roscoe Born taken from “The Suspended Sentence: A Guide for Writers” (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1986):

“The cliché factory works around the clock. A writer with any pride – and there are no real writers without it – will brace himself constantly against some other writer’s trick phrase or odd use of a familiar word. A phrase that a writer admires may, indeed, be worthy, but he must resist the temptation to adopt it as his own, first because it would be a shameless theft, and second because a thousand other imitative writers are sure to do the same. That is the way to avoid clichés. And the writer who shuns the fashionable will always be in style."

Knight recommends a test to check if your words or phrases are tired: ask yourself if they have “potential comic value”. He cites an example from “When Words Collide” (see the twist in the title of the book taken from the clichéd “when worlds collide”) by Lauren Kessler and Duncan McDonald, who end their section on clichés thus:

“So, as the sun sinks slowly in the Western Sky, be your own best friend and bid a fond farewell to the tried and true expressions that seem to creep into writing like a thief in the night, robbing it blind of its force.”

I hope this piece meets your expectations, Gauri. Cliches are tired, thread-bare, worn-out words -- better left unsaid.

*****

Restore the editing desk

The description of the title of my blog "Against the Tide" does not and can not adequately express, in such summary jargon, what I mean. In these columns, therefore, I shall take up some aspect of my struggle - against the tide.

Let us discuss how sub-editing is currently being devalued.

Since publishers forcibly eloped with computers, (for it is an unholy alliance), I have chronicled how sub-editing is being devalued. Some big newspapers In India started stealthily by discontinuing the standard practice of having a separate desk that edited copy after the reporters had typed their stories: a chief sub at the head of the U-shaped horseshoe desk is today an endangered species.

The owners of daily newspapers cut the desk, NOT because they wanted to devalue editing but because, like mean Scrooges, they wanted an excuse to save money by reducing the number of subs and "encouraging" reporters to sub their own copy!

(Reporters, in any case, have this "war" going with subs. Because reporters have always felt they know how to write and resent the well-meaning efforts of subs to rewrite their copy, they jumped at this chance of getting their creations into print -- without submitting to the mid-wifery of the sub.)

The result is the suffocation of the desk. Clear writing is dying. Readers have begun to notice spelling errors and grammatical mistakes. This is happening not only because the quality of writing has deteriorated in general, but also because owners, owner-editors (a new breed) and managing editors (as opposed to working or writing editors) have conspired to lay down such un-professional rules in printed commodities that are brands, having ceased to be newspapers.

That is why I stand, and I urge my students, colleagues, friends and well-wishers to speak out and stand up "against the tide" that devalues editing. The best reporters and feature-writers will also stand hand-in-hand with the best subs in this struggle to restore the editing desk.

TAIL-PIECE:

My last post referred indirectly to "retirement". Could I have known that a passionate lover of books had actually retired? Please refer to the column "Past and Present" in the Hindu Sunday Magazine dated 15 March 2009, where Ramchandra Guha writes about the decision of Mr. T.S. Shanbhag, "How to retire" to close the Premier Bookshop after four decades of serving the book-lovers of Bangalore.

*****

The first of these weekly columns has become over-long. I promise to stick to my self-imposed 800-word limit in the next column. Would you like to suggest a name for this weekly column? And maybe design a logo for me? Or suggest topics for the think piece? And questions for me to cogitate?

Please comment here itself on the post, so that all can see what you have to say. Remember: I shall alert only those of you to my posts, who comment here. Even a word or a line will suffice to be eligible.

Your support is my strength.
- Joe.

Pune, Sunday, 22 March 2009.

Along the line, at railway gate No. 58

2009-03-04T17:56:00.010+05:30

My dear students, friends, colleagues and well-wishers,

Today, 5 March 2009, I complete 58 years. Along the railway line of my life, I stand at railway gate No. 58. For all these years coming freely to me, I am grateful to my mother, the late Amy, and my father, the late Denis, and to our Mother Earth, for whom I know I have not cared enough, when I look at the way I selfishly care for my family, students, friends and work colleagues.

I am also playing my second innings now. For this, I am thankful to modern medicine, the Pune Heart Brigade (phone 1050), my wife Kalpana and daughter Pallavi, neighbours, friends and my brother-in-law Rajeev, who rushed me to hospital. Having survived my heart attack of 2 September 2006, unlike so many of my good friends and relatives, life is new and always fresh.

Sometime back Kajal Iyer tagged me, asking to know 25 random things about me. I took part for fun. But I am now going to rewrite the note I made then, and edit that list to write up this auto-sketch – at railway gate No. 58.

*****

Why at railway gate No. 58? Simply because I am the eldest son of a railwayman, who used to get transferred from place to place. So I know what it is be on the move like a gypsy. And therefore I can appreciate settling down and setting down roots. What would I give in exchange for all the money in the world? A chance to meet even one of my school-mates from that “lost childhood” when I was a little boy in the small railway towns of Jabalpur and Nagpur (1956-57), Solapur (1957-58) and Manmad (1958-61).

As I recall that journey, let me honour my mother, one of India’s greatest playback singers, hailed in the late 1940s as the “Lata Mangeshkar of the Konkani stage” – Amy Pinto, nee Mary Therese D'Cruz (1925-69). I’m older now than her then by 14 years; she died at the age of 44. Nearing 40 years since she died, yet she sings within my heart.

Confined to the four walls of our home, she taught us, her children – her Class of Three; after 1962, it was a Class of Four. I used to be a great one for gathering piles of books as prizes in school, till my mother learned me the lesson, “If you can, compete – with yourself”.

Also let me shower flowers on the fair name of my father, Denis John Pinto (1923-2001), an upright and God-fearing man, who put up with endless pain, suffering and deprivation because … “Honesty is the best policy”. The other person as equally upright is my father-in-law, Prof. K.L. Joshi (born 1922).

*****

When I was in my early 20s and the hippies wore flowers in San Fransisco, I used to have long hair up to my shoulders; later I grew a beard. This was the result of the world-wide protests against the unjust war in Vietnam and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), a part of my growing-up years in school and college – a deep and permanent influence. Also let me mention the dearly-held musical relics, including the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger.

I can’t remember the day when I was not in love – with words. So my first crush was virtual, even before the Personal Computer – Agnes – appearing on the pages of the Charles Dickens novel, “David Copperfield”. Now the love in my life, after my love-marriage wife Kalpana, is my daughter J.K. Pallavi. I remember the three years in the cold and wet of Leeds, Yorkshire, England, taking care of her in a back-to-back basement when she was barely three, while my wife did her Ph.D. (And what of my friends, without whom I could have not known that friendship can match up to love?)

I have spent years, off and on, in Mumbai. First as a little boy in the mid-1950s; then in school, college, etc. (1961-73); again after the Emergency (1977-82). What do I miss about Mumbai (I shan’t call it Bombay as the imperial English did)? The trundling trams, when I was a little boy; uncrowded local trains and red BEST buses on a Sunday morning; the common crows, sparrows, mynahs; the great struggle of the textile workers against the robber mill-owners; red flags in a worker morcha at Azad Maidan; the heady mix of faces and tongues from all over India; the discipline on the roads. Above all, the entwined couples clasping hands in municipal gardens ...

What do I NOT miss about Mumbai? The idle rich, gambling on the stock market, who have raped the city; the skyscrapers that blot out the sky; the private vehicles that kill and maim far worse and more deep than terrorist guns; the curse of the Shiv Sena and their ilk, who have brought shame to the glorious inheritors of Chhatrapati Shivaji ...

To give you some more feel and touch for the passing show of my life, here goes. My favourite movie critic, Pauline Kael of the New York Times, who dubbed the “Sound of Music” as the “Sound of Mucous”. A few of my favourite things: the red mud, swaying coconut trees and the fish curry rice of Mangalore; the lilt of my Konkani mother tongue; a few drops of kaju feni, soft cotton garments. And always, books.

Besides, love and peace, compassion for the poor moves me beyond tears. Alongside this post on my blog, I have catalogued my values and beliefs, as well as quotes from my favourite authors and a list of books and websites, including some by my students.

*****

What made me sketch this auto-bio? In a way, groping to prepare for the reality of aging, at the threshold of retirement. Can I retire? Maybe not, in the sense that I’ll stop working. But I shall retire from doing what I do not like. I am coming to grips with work on different terms.

Along the line, at railway gate No. 58, I also await the student, who may exceed me, who may dare to go beyond imagination, against the tide. To whom I can entrust the torch given to me by my ancestors and teachers.

First, my English teacher from Standard VII in St Stanislaus School, Bandra, Mumbai, during 1962-63. Mrs Philomena D’Souza (nee Valladares) used to give us five topics to write one essay every week; I wrote on all five; Mrs Valladares corrected all five, sometimes rewrote them in her own neat hand-writing! Where have all the great Goan gurus gone?

Second, my Chemistry professor from B.Sc. in St Xavier’s College, Dhobitalao, Mumbai, during 1969-71. Prof V. V. Nadkarny, with his white open shirt, dhoti, and black round topi, taught me not only about organic molecules and carbon chains, but also about facing up to life. When arrogantly, I had refused to apolgise after back-answering a laboratory demonstrator, Prof Nadkarny apologised on my behalf though he was the Head of the Department then. His kind and free classes at his Dadar home, under the benign gaze of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, are with me today, though I do not use the chemistry I learned.

Third, the unlettered mofussil elders of village Kasarpimpalgaon, who taught me, “JoeP of KP”, to speak Marathi and learn of “sanskar” when, as a founder-member of the rural NGO called Vistas, I was working in the drought-prone areas of Pathardi taluka, Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra, during 1973-77.

“Those were the days, my friends,
We thought they’d never end,
We’d sing and dance for ever and a day.
We’d live the life we choose,
We thought we’d never lose,
For we were young and sure to have our way.”

The ones who are no more: Smita Patil, Norman “Vikram Salgaonkar” Dantas, Anna Salve. Now the rest (in alphabetical order): Biplab “Bulu” Basu, Vilma Colaco, Dominic D’Souza, Eric D’Souza, Glynis “Asha” D’Souza, John “Babuti” D’Souza, Lancy Fernandes, Nafisa Goga, Pradeep Guha, Ayesha Kagal, Aspi Mistry, Lakshmi “Buchy” Rameshwar Rao.

Fourth, the late Feriwala Francis and Bhabhi as well as the slum-dwellers of Kaju Tekdi, Bhandup, Mumbai, and my comrades at the CITU unit of Prabhakar Sanzgiri. During this same period, my participation as a founder general-secretary of the Lok Vidnyan Sanghatana not only immersed me in the popularisation of science but also introduced me to my Pune girl Kalpana Joshi, whom I married on 26 January 1982.

Fifth, my scribe seniors – S.D. Wagh, Taher Shaikh, Harry David, Y.V. Krishnamurthy – and delightful colleagues at the one and only “our very own” local English daily of Pune, Maharashtra Herald (estd. 1963), where I joined as a sub-editor on a salary of Rs.600 per month on 2 May 1983 and left as assistant editor in 1996.

Sixth, working since August 2006 with the eminent social worker, Shantilal Muttha, Founder and National President of the Bharatiya Jain Sanghatana on trustee empowerment and training programs.

And finally, my students in Pune where I have been teaching print journalism and communication as a regular visiting faculty since 1987, at the invitation and with the cooperation of Dr. Kiran Thakur, P.N. Paranjpe, Dr. Vishwas Mehendale, Prof M.S. Pillai, Ujjwal Chowdhury, Shashidhar Nanjundaiah, Dr. Keval Kumar and many others. If my students have learned anything from me, I have surely learned a lot from them.

*****

And so, at railway gate No. 58, I come full circle.

The packed local trains are the reason why I left the Mumbai that I love so much. When we were staying at Dadar in the late 60s, I used to travel 10 minutes by train from Dadar to school in Byculla. The locals were getting difficult. But my father was a railway officer and, therefore, we got a free First Class pass, so we missed the crush in the third class bogies.

When I joined St. Xavier's in 1967, the journey only got longer, 20-25 minutes from Dadar till VT. But in the first class it was still bearable. Fortunately, I escaped from the locals of Mumbai in 1973 and worked in village Maharashtra from 1973-77. If not for the horrors of the Indira Emergency, I may have never come back to Mumbai. When I got back, the trains were choking.

Slowly, travelling by local trains became a torture that I would dread. And when I was in Bhandup, the agony became too much to bear. Fortunately again, I got married and decided to move to Pune, where I also became a full-time journalist.

On the brink of 58, I dread travelling in Pune too. There are no trains here that can be packed (though I have heard that the locals to and from Lonavla are worse that the locals of Mumbai!!!).

But here we have our local variant of torture on the cruel roads, what I call the “chhote shaitan” – the two-wheelers that in the end may murder Pune, unless public transport improves.

Now the wheels are turning within the wheels. At railway gate No. 58.

Keep in touch. Take care.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, Thursday, 5th March 2009.

Cry, my beloved Mangalore

2009-02-03T21:18:00.012+05:30

My dear students,

Ever since the troubles in Mangalore, last year, when fanatics had attacked Christian churches, and this year, when fanatics attacked a pub, Mangaloreans settled across the globe have been worried about what is happening back home.

Mangaloreans, including me, are a community that migrate easily. But their roots remain back home, to which they return during the vacations and where they have built houses on the small pieces of ancestral land they own.

My father was a railwayman, having left his native village of Sornad, in Bantwal taluka, some 50 miles south of Mangalore. Denis John Pinto migrated to Bombay and got married to Mary Therese D’Cruz on 22 May 1950. But through his many transfers in the Signal & Telecom Department of Central Railway, he kept returning to his native Mangalore, steadfast in the belief that that was the surest way to ensure that his children would keep their roots nourished.

Not only Mangaloreans, but every decent citizen in India is shocked by what is happening in Mangalore. Let’s listen to a son of Mangalore – Amith Prabhu.

*****

Hooligans today, terrorists tomorrow

“I had remained silent when the churches were attacked last September in my home-town of Mangalore. I had not woken up to the gravity of the situation, except for some still images of a community in pain.

But the Republic Day eve this year was different. As shots of the pub attack began flashing on national news channels, I was convinced My Mangalore was no more the same.

Having been born and bred in Mangalore, I have seen gradual changes in various spheres over the first two decades of my life there. The last eight years have been different: a sudden rise of mindless hooligans, backed by political parties.

The disturbing fact is that harmony is being destroyed in the name of religion. And many of the attackers are well-educated youth, who could use their potential in several constructive activities.

There is a direct link between these disgusting activists and the state government. This was expected after the last assembly elections. However, the level to which these self-styled moral police are stooping, and the way they are moving around scot-free, following these criminal acts, is appalling.

In the recent pub attack, the electronic media (forgive me this accusation) was an equal partner. In order to get cheap content, they chose not to inform the police, who could have caught these lousy miscreants red-handed by laying a trap.

While destroying property to protest unacceptable behaviour in a pub is pardonable, the beating up of customers, especially women and whacking them in front of cameras, is not just audacity but calls for public whipping. Unfortunately, our judicial system does not provide for such punishment. And news is already out that most of the dirty fellows, who were arrested, are out on bail.

Except for the magnitude and the enormous loss of life, I do not see a difference between the terrorists of Pakistani origin, who attacked Mumbai in November, and these cruel rowdies who vandalised the pub and assaulted men and women partying there.

These are no less than terrorists and are trying to gain free publicity, thanks to the news-hungry TV channels that encourage such acts by covering them with gusto.

That’s what the terrorists on 26/11 wanted in Mumbai. And that’s also what these sick men in Mangalore wanted on 24/1. Both of them got it on a platter.

NGOs usually end up as political parties or terror outfits. The roots of terror are sown during such organised programmes. Mangalore is being used as a ‘laboratory of hate’.

Thankfully, Mangalore is one of those Indian cities that are both tolerant and resilient. Mangaloreans may forgive, but won’t forget. Such violent attacks on harmless citizens will be given fitting replies.

A national movement against terror and hate is taking birth. Mumbai saw a glimpse of this campaign during December. Another “freedom struggle” is waiting to take off.

This time, against the hooligans of today, who are training to become the terrorists of tomorrow.”

*****

Amith Prabhu is an Indian communications professional, who has lived most of his life in Mangalore, and is currently based in Mumbai.

The next piece is by Kajal Iyer, who works with the electronic media in Mumbai.

*****

Men need to control women

“Isn’t Vijay Mallya from Karnataka? So is the state ready to give up its highest revenue-generating industry, at the whim of some group that thinks it is protecting Indian culture?

And pray, what Indian culture are they talking about? They surely haven’t read about how the great courtesan Amrapali was revered as a woman of learning and influence by this very Indian culture.

Have they read Bhasa, Kalidasa or Jaidev’s Geet Govind, which are our cultural heritage? They sure haven’t read any of the scriptures or maybe they have only read select paragraphs of the Manu Smruti, which is why they think they need to control women.

Every so-called culture in the world has this great insecurity about their women forgetting their culture. It’s strange, isn’t it, that men beat women, calling themselves the custodians of culture, and demanding that the women should ‘mend’ their ways so that they would give the correct cultural knowledge to future generations?

If these men are such great custodians, they should be able to impart all the so-called cultural values themselves, isn’t it? Why hold women responsible?

Tacit supporters of the attacks say that the liquor culture is spoiling our youth. Such incidents might help ‘correct’ some errant youth. Then shouldn’t they become volunteers with Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)? Strange how even attacking someone’s personal space is interpreted as the constitutional freedom to voice a protest.

I don’t enjoy pubs much. But that doesn’t mean I have the right to judge my friends, who frequent pubs. Have these men ever heard the quote, “I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend, till death, your right to say it”.

Oops, I forget, the quote isn’t Indian, na?”

*****

Kajal has her own blog.

*****

Where do we go from here?

We have seen a lot of petitions on the Net - sign them. Be active. Join groups. The main thing is action, not mere writing and discussion on the Net. Remember, the hooligans have to be faced on the streets. Like the terrorists were confronted in Mumbai.

Here, there is a lot of scope to act on our own. We do not have to rely only on the government or political parties.

Suggest action. Wherever you are, get in touch with like-minded persons.

Your support is my strength.
- Joe.

Pune, Tuesday, 3rd February 2008.

Really? Is this happening again to India?

2009-01-28T15:12:00.007+05:30

My dear students,

Such a joy to report that my students share my blog: look at my posts and the number written by you. The trend started with sharp questions from Amith Prabhu (SIMC), which I tried to answer in “Working one’s way up and other queries”. Gauri Gharpure (Ranade) then sent me a quote about poetry and on an off-chance I decided to carry it because it had to do with "clarity" an issue that concerns journalists, “The Clarity of Poetry”.

Then came two excellent pieces from Smriti Mudgal (SIMC), who has her own blog, "Ambaree" in Hindi. She sent in a highly personal memoir about her love afair with the people of Mumbai: “Mumbai: a people with a sense of purpose”. Smriti then paid a fond tribute to her favourite school teacher: “To Chitra Ma’am … with love, Smriti”. Such is the stuff my blog is made up of (two prepositions at the end of one sentence!?!?!).

And to carry forward the torch for poetry, Baruk Feddabonn from Bangalore asks, “Should You Read Poetry?”.

My colleague, Abhay Vaidya of DNA, Pune, also replied to Amith with, “No room for gifts in journalism”.

Dr Vivek Pinto, my friend from school in Mumbai, who is currently in Tokyo, has also been emailing provocative and thoughtful links (see “Mumbai attacks: one man’s freedom-fighter is another man’s terrrorist”) faster than I can upload on a section of my blog, “Dr Vivek Pinto - Links”, devoted entirely and separately to his contributions.

*****

Now Baisakhi Roy-Tandon, a 2003 SIMC alumnus, who describes herself as “a home-maker, new mom and an avid knowledge-seeker” has sent in a poem, “Ennui.” I have touched it up, here and there, as usual.

Previously, a reporter with The Indian Express, Baisakhi is “sitting on the sidelines, reading up voraciously on history, past and present.” Check out her blog: “Kissing Kin” (“Be well, good, nice, old-fashioned”)

Let Baisakhi introduce “Ennui” in her own words:

*****

By Baisakhi Roy

‘Ennui’ was inspired by a feeling of hopelessness when the Mumbai attacks happened. I was far away in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA, watching my precious city burn, as it had so many times in the past.

I almost laughed, “Really? Is this happening again?” Will we become another conflict zone like the Gaza Strip and Bosnia? Will it take another 50 years, to live in a peaceful India? This is what we have become: a mess of unresolved issues, a mess in which the glorious legacy of India has been lost and forgotten.

ENNUI

This is a time to gloat;
we are such pieces of work.
This is how we go about
our daily ennui.

We bathe in the sun;
We love, eat, and try to gain respect.
We amble,
gnawing into space.

We hate the sound of white noise,
”This is mine. This is yours”.
We croak, until hoarse.
Scratch, until we bleed.

We send our children
into prompt assemblies
to ask for wisdom:
Good thoughts, words and deeds.

We build our castles
and etherise our air.
Then ask for allegiance
to our whimsical gods.

We broker peace,
Sober in solidarity.
But hide our rancor
To light a wayward fire.

*****

Can you see the budding poets lurking among the journalists? Read the journalists who feel and write like poets. Join them. The pages of my blog, “Against the Tide”, shall be open to you, my dear students. For what greater joy is there for a teacher than to see one’s students go ahead, shining bright.

Your support is my strength.
- Joe.

Pune, Wednesday, 28 January 2009.

Should you read poetry?

2009-01-16T12:46:00.012+05:30

My dear students,

When a student of mine from Ranade Institute, Gauri Gharpure in Kolkata, sent in a quote on poetry I used it in the post, "The clarity of poetry" because as a journalist I have been obsessed by clarity. I had no idea then that some of my readers were great admirers of poetry.

One of them, Baruk Feddaboon, based in Bangalore, has his own blog called "bottle broke" Click on the pic below to get into "bottle broke"

"The clarity of poetry" got eleven (11) comments. But it was the diversity of the comments that astonished me, considering this was not a blog for poets. One of my readers, Baruk Feddabonn, who is not one of my students from any of the places where I teach in Pune, had early on introduced himself and I kept thinking to myself, "Here is my Eklavya." So I asked him to do this piece on poetry for journalists.

I have touched up the piece here and there, as is the time-worn custom among subs. I hope Baruk will understand.

By Baruk Feddabonn

Should you read poetry? Hell, I don’t know. Can I tell you why or how to read poetry? Hell, I don’t know! What I do have to offer are a few thoughts on what I have, over the years, got from poems.

The following five pieces:

1. What is Real?
2. Hope
3. Perspectives
4. Weirdness
5. Language and Poetry

are based on poems and bits of poems, some well known, and some not so well known. I do hope these poems help in convincing you that poets are not necessarily the useless buggers they are often made out to be!

1. What is real?

“When Prime Minister Gujral
planned a visit to the city
bamboos sprang up from pavements
like a welcoming committee.

But when he came, he was
only the strident sounds of sirens
like warnings in war-time bombings.”

(When the Prime Minister Visits Shillong the Bamboos Watch in Silence; Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih)

I often hear attacks on poetry for not being ‘factual’. Somehow, not being factual is seen as a bad thing. But honestly, what are facts? And how important are they? A lot of poetry deals with the metaphorical and the imagination. Things are alluded to; often not ‘directly’ spoken of. But is that wrong?

In common language, we speak of the sun rising. ‘Factually’, that is untrue – the sun does no such thing. Nor does it set. The ‘rising’ and ‘setting’ of the sun are our human explanations or metaphors for the natural phenomenon of the earth moving around the sun!

So while the Prime Minister was not ‘factually’ the sound of sirens, that line aptly describes the distance the rulers, even in a democracy, keep from the ruled – visually (bamboos on pavements) and aurally (sirens). And that ‘only’ – describes, better than an entire sentence, the alienation, which the poet felt. So while not ‘factual’, the poem is ‘true’.

And now you decide. Will you transcend the facts and opt for the truth instead?

*****

2. Hope

“Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.”

(September 1, 1939; W.H. Auden)

Sometimes, switching on the evening news plunges me into despair. I see war, corporate greed and the non-stop destruction of the natural world. And this is only the news that is reported.

In the not-or-barely-reported news are farmer suicides, Bhopal victims and Binayak Sen. I watch the increasingly self-obsessed lives of the super-rich; the cynical manipulations of politicians and governments; the prostitution of religion to the dictates of power.

It’s easy to get lost in the darkness, at least for me, and I wonder whether it would not be easier, more practical, to pick up a gun. A messy proposition, yes, but maybe a simpler one?

And then I remember this poem.

Written on the eve of the Second World War, the poem by W.H. Auden speaks of the darkness and despair the world is under, trying to understand why. And though that question is never answered, there IS an answer – that what is important, in the end, is to see the “points of light”, and “show an affirming flame.”

I think I can try to do that!

*****

3. Perspectives

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;

(The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; T.S. Eliot)

A close friend and I are currently arguing on facebook. He feels, to quote, that “the Israelis have their heads better screwed on than the Palestinians do.”

I utterly and absolutely disagree.

I see the Israeli state as a creation of terrorist incursion, whether the original Israel of the Bible, where God apparently told the Jews to wipe out the Canaanites, or the Israel created in 1947 on the strength of British guns. This friend, by the way, is a reasonable person (as much as we can pretend to be), and hates war as much as I do. But the argument goes on.

Point: many people watch sunsets - on beaches, in the mountains, even from the rooftops of urban homes. Some of us photograph the sunsets. I doubt, however, that anyone has made such a grisly and unlikely comparison, as Eliot does. And while I appreciate the comparison – I find it humorous – I know many people who do not.

While no wars have been fought on what sunsets should be compared to, many wars seem to have been fought for, what to me seem, silly reasons such as country and religion. Then again, maybe you don’t think these are silly reasons. Maybe, we can all benefit from understanding each other’s perspective.

*****

4. Weirdness

“Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.”

(Pied beauty; Gerard Manley Hopkins)

My grandfather was hardcore working class; when I say he built his house with his own hands, I mean that literally.

In a society dominated by an increasing desire for more power and status, Apu (Mizo familiar for grandfather) was suspicious of all things ‘big’ and ‘authoritative’, and proud, till the day he died, of working with his hands. Fiercely independent and bluntly outspoken, he made some very powerful enemies who almost succeeded in destroying him.

His name, appropriately, was Rualhleia, which loosely translated from the Mizo means ‘he who is not even’. He definitely had a lot of rough edges!

This poem by Hopkins reminds me of my grandfather, in its celebration of the strange, the common and the uneven.

We let others determine who we are and how we respond to the world. Being ‘acceptable’ is important, whatever the cost! Recently, I was berated by a colleague who thought it shameful that I did not, in my position in the company, drive a car.

I have been receiving a slew of emails telling me to forward them, if I am patriotic. I am constantly told that:
- the only hope for India is in the ‘new’ capitalist economy;
- I should be economically successful;
- I should buy more; from recognised brand names;
- crime is something the lower classes do;
- the army is good;
- beauty means fairness;
- I should want to marry, and have children, and care about what happens to the ‘family name’; and
- I should avoid 'weird' people who disagree with what society thinks of as 'acceptable'.

But I can’t do that. My Apu and I, we’ll stand by all that is “counter, original, spare, strange”.

*****

5. Language and Poetry

“I am a venereal sore in the private part of language”

(Cruelty; Namdeo Dhasal; translated by Dilip Chitre)

“Poetry must be raw, like a side of beef,
should drip blood, remind you of sweat
and dusty slaughter and the epidermal crunch
and the sudden bullet to the head.”

(What Poetry Means to Ernestina in Peril; Mona Zote)

“I’ll go for words,
Words are my forte.

Words stab and jab,
Heal, hurt,
Mask, unmask,
Paint pictures.

Words
Create.”

(Power of Words; Malsawm Hriatzuali Jacob)

Language is fascinating. You know how they say a picture speaks more than a thousand words? Sometimes a sentence speaks more than a thousand pictures!

Language can be used like:
a warm gentle hand; caressing, hugging, loving;
a wall, to separate and segregate;
a whip, to subdue and suppress;
a rock, to retaliate.

Language can be like a scream of horror.

Language can be:
loving, harsh, angry, cold;
questioning, pleading;
full of laughter one moment, solemn the next.

Language can elevate the common; tear down the proud. Language can calm, hurt; goad, encourage; dream.

Language is like a knife – that can chop up food or slit a throat.

*****

People ask me, “Why do I like poetry?”

I tell them, “Because poetry is to language what pottery is to mud.”

You may email Baruk Feddabonn at: baruk@provoke.co.in.

*****

Henceforth, I will sign off, borrowing a phrase by Sushma Nair (nee Menon), a student of mine from 1992 when SIMC used to be called "Symbiosis Institute of Journalism and Communication (SIJC)". She had had coined the phrase for me to use as the editor of Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, the house magazine of Deepak Fertilisers and Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd, Pune, where I worked in PR and Corp Comm (don't be shocked!!) during 1996-2003. Thank you, Sushma.

I hope the New Year 2009 is taking good care of you. Keep in touch by phone, SMS, email or through the evergreen postman.

Your support is my strength,
- Joe.

Pune, 16th January 2009.

Celebrity journalists and pretty faces

2008-12-28T12:52:00.009+05:30

My dear students,

Gift No. 3 from Santa Claus, before we have rung out the Old Year and rung in the New Year, recalling the famous poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

In the manner of Amith Prabhu (see “Working one’s way up and other queries”, 28 October 2008, on this blog), another of my students has put to me questions that have caused her some “disillusionment”.

The issues she raises are of “professional interest” to us all over the world as journalists, whether in print, on-line, or on-screen. I have borrowed freely from the raw material, contained in our messages to each other and written out this reply.

*****

She asks, “My question is about the whole personality culture (cult) that we have in journalism, especially the electronic media. I am not talking about the extensive coverage given to celebrities (celebs). I am talking about how journalists and editors themselves end up becoming personalities and how a smooth operator with connections is at times considered a better journalist than the ordinary guy who writes well. It is something that is more characteristic of TV, of course, because of the visual nature of the medium and our own preference for pretty faces to watch on TV.”

I have chosen the headline for this piece, “Celebrity journalists and pretty faces” from her question itself. Celebrity journalists are not the exclusive creation of TV. They existed much earlier and thrive in the print media today also. One species of celebrity journalist goes by the name: “syndicated columnist”. Readers have their own favourites and some even change papers when their pet columnist switches allegiance.

In a hard-hitting book, “Journalism: truth or dare?” (Oxford, 2003), Ian Hargreaves, the BBC and FT journalist who became a journalism professor at Cardiff, is concerned about “the end of journalism” and “the polarisation of the news media with, at one end, badly paid and sometimes inadequately trained young people in smaller newspapers, radio stations and magazines, and at the other (end), a handful of celebrity journalists who present television shows or write columns for the big newspapers and earn show-business salaries.”

Hargreaves makes this observation based on his experience with British, European and US newspapers, but I can vouch personally and from the expereinces of senior colleagues, friends and my students, that this is true in India also.

In a cruel piece, the late Dhiren Bhagat (1957-88), wrote a poison piece in "The Contemporary Conservative (Viking, 1990) about a certain famed columinist, let us dub him “PQR”. Dhiren Bhagat entitled the piece, “Why PQR can’t think straight.” When I first chanced upon it, I was stunned speechless by its naked frankness. Now I know how factual Dhiren Bhagat is. That Dalit-baiting columnist still thrives, churning out stuff that Dhiren Bhagat said deserves to be “flushed down the toilet.”

This slick gentleman does not have a pretty face, nor is is his style with words, gripping. But he is “a smooth operator with connections” and part of a coterie of cronies that believes in “you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours”. And, therefore, he is still “syndicated”, a jargon for the simpler “racket”. Is it surprising then that such unethical practices carry over into TV and create “glam scribes” on the small screen?

*****

Our student then poses the dilemma with which she grapples daily, “How does one keep working in the face of this obvious bias towards the celebrity journalist? How does one deal with the fact that a Shobaa De is probably going to be more famous and earn more perks than a P Sainath?”

But should that really surprise us, honest journalists, who have our eyes and ears to the ground?

Shobaa De gossips about her cats and dogs and other party animals, immersed in the trivial pass-times of the idle rich, where “the pursuit of happiness” has decayed into “the happiness of pursuit.” Beyond a tiny circle, in which her sponsors and advertisers bribe the mass media to ensure her notoriety, De is unknown.

The rural affairs editor of The Hindu, P Sainath is concerned about agrarian distress and farmer suicides and about the impact that LPG (liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation) is having on agriculture. But farmers (alive or dead) or their widows and orphans do not consume the newspapers, which have transmogrified themselves into brands.

Ignore the fame, which is actually notoriety. Speaking about war, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) felt that as long as people saw war as "wicked", they would accept it. But as soon as war became "vulgar", the people will reject it. The same logic applies to the "vulgar" fame of the celebrity journalist, propped up by the bribes of sponsors and advertisers. A lot of PR and Corp Comm also goes into building up the images of such dubious characters.

*****

Our student continues, “Whatever specialised course you do (in places like SIMC, where she was a student), it doesn’t actually prepare you for the reality of actual professional life. Maybe it’s the realisation that certain ideas were naive and that not everything goes as you want it to that caused this dissillusionment.”

Nothing in our student career prepares us for life itself. The university of life is one of its kind and never to be replicated in our frail educational institutions.

But she herself describes a technique she uses, which I recommend highly to all my students and all those who get depressed by the adventures of the celebrity journalists and who want to keep their sanity.

She writes, “On my clipboard, I have made a habit of pinning up a paper listing all the praise that I get for my blogs or my coverage on Facebook and Orkut from perfectly random people. It’s mails like these that keep the hope alive and make one feel that somewhere you are doing the right thing. Sometimes, I lose sight of the fact that I should work for these people who watch me.”

I would also recommend strong doses of Studs Terkel.

After her first question, which I have discussed above, I spoke with her on the phone (and if you, dear students, have a problem don’t hesitate to pick up the phone and speak your heart out). I picked up a sad undertone in her voice and I told her to firmly keep in front of her eyes the ordinary reader or viewer. I think my advice registered, for she goes on, “Thanks for reminding me about that. And thank you for the phone call. I guess I do take things a little to heart; has always been a weakness and I am trying to grow out of it.”

I told her, and tell all of you who get depressed by the antics of the celebrity journalist, that you are one among the chosen few. That if it pains and hurts, you know you are on the correct path. Beware of the sycophants. Listen to the blowing wind ... that is where the readers speak ...

Warmest smiles in the times of ... disillusionment,
- Joe.
Pune, 28 December 2008.

To Chitra ma’am … with love, Smriti

2008-12-24T16:43:00.006+05:30

My dear students,

During the joyful rejoicing of Christmas and the peace of the New Year 2009, may we find the moments and the caring to remember -- think of, speak to, write to -- the teachers who made us what we are.

Smriti Mudgal glows with love and affection for a teacher, who showed "faith" in her at a time when her parents "doubted" if she'd be able "to make a place for herself" in this competitive world.

*****

By Smriti Mudgal

I was three years old when I went to Sardar Patel Vidyalaya (SPV), Lodhi Estate, New Delhi, for my school admission with my father. I don’t remember much of the interview, except that the teacher asked me to tell a story. I couldn’t remember one. So I rolled my eyes and saw a picture of two monkeys, smiling at me. So I made up a story, right away.

“Once upon a time, there were two monkeys, who lived on the same tree. The monkeys used to fight a lot over the fruits of the tree. One day, while they were fighting, one monkey almost fell off a branch. He tried saving himself by holding on to the other monkey's leg. Now, both thought, if one falls, so does the other one. So a better idea would be for the monkey on the tree to pull the one who was falling. That's what they did. And decided, then and there, that they would never fight with each other.”

The teacher looked at my father and said, “She's creative. But more than that, she believes in survival of self and others. For her sensitivity, we would love to take her in.” (This bit, my father told me after I grew up.)

So I was in this lovely school, where you don’t have to push your chair, get up and drone in that monotonous tone, “Goooood … Mooorning … Ma'aaaam”. Instead you raise your hand and just wave it vigorously, if you wish, or else just smile at your teacher. Many considered this waving of the hand as funny, snobbish or pseudo …

To each his own. I loved it.

I was a pretty lost kid, while in school. After my admission, I can’t remember any incidents. But it seems to me, I suddenly woke out of my deep slumber in Class 6, when this horrible teacher accused me of being ... vain. She thought I was dumb and way too conscious of my looks. I don’t think I was vain then. (Later on, I did become somewhat aware of my looks.) But, because of her unfair accusations, I became withdrawn.

I was out of place because the school had a lot of kids from families of bureaucrats, artists, journalists, the intelligentsia. My father was a product manager for a lighting company and I was not comfortable about it.

Every time he went to drop me to school (if I missed my school bus) on his scooter, I would keep asking him to drop me on the street and not drop me till the gate. I even hated my boring tiffin, which would have a simple poori jam roll, whereas the other kids would bring peanut butter sandwiches.

I was so uncomfortable in my skin till I went to Class 8 and met this really tiny woman called, “Chitra Srinivas.”

Chitra was our home-room teacher. “Home-room teacher” means she was “my class teacher”. Apart from the subject she taught us, that is, History, she also had 20 minutes everyday extra with us during our home-room period. During these 20 minutes, we children could chat; finish our home-work; talk to the home-room teacher, about anything under the sun; or sometimes even doze off in class. But I would do nothing, except wait for those 20 minutes to get over.

Chitra noticed that, but did not disturb me. Except once, when she walked up to me.

Chitra: “Smriti, is there a problem?”
Smriti: “Sorry!”

Chitra: “Why are you so quiet? Do you have any friends?”
Smriti: “I am fine. I am ok.”

Chitra: “Smriti, you can tell me if there is anything?”
Smriti: “No, there isn’t.”

Chitra: “I just want you to know, you are a fine girl. I know you don’t like history and geography, but that’s alright. And trust me, you will do fine, without them too.”

I looked around myself at the children, who were fond of her. My memories of her are few and far between.

*****

She had a unique way of checking exam papers. She would mark the papers and sometimes even wrote funny comments alongside. Once, we got four days to prepare for the History paper. One of the students managed to get only 4/25 … So Chitra wrote against the marks, “That’s one mark for each day’s preparation … "Sorry, couldn’t give more” or “You can’t be serious! Did you hide a comic inside your history book?” She was equally generous, “I could give you 25/25, for this one answer only.”

Also, she could appreciate other skills in her students, even if they didn’t show any interest in her subject – History. She realised over a period of time that I couldn’t retain History in my head, but that I had a way with words, poems.

So she asked me to write a poem, which I did. She asked me to recite it in class. I had pasted the lyrics on a tune, which was yet another song from our street theatre class. The moment I started singing, a boy pointed out that the tune was not original.

Chitra gave that boy a piece of her mind, “Did Smriti ever say the tune is hers? She's written the lyrics, hear her out”. The boy did; Chitra did; the whole class did. And after the song was over, everyone was clapping, and I was red in my cheeks.

Chitra was our home-room teacher till Class 10. When we were passing out, she sang a song for us, “Aa chal ke tujhe, main le ke chaloon, ek aise gagan ke tale, jahan gam bhi na ho, aansoon bhi na ho, bas pyaar hi pyaar pale.”

I did not speak to her after that.

*****

Two years ago, I went to the SPV school reunion. She was there, chatting with all the ex-students. She remembered everyone’s name. I was unsure whether she would remember me. I walked up to her, already blushing, “Hi Chitra ma’am, do you remember me, I am …”

“Of course, I remember you, Smriti,” Chitra ma’am said, “Look at you, how pretty you look in this golden saree. My God, what a wonderful job you’re doing on TV. You remember, I always told you, you’ll do well for yourself. But you were such a low-confidence person. Look at you now! God, how much you talk … I am so thrilled to see you, Smriti!”

I smiled. And for the first time, in that elitist school, I found my place in her heart.

Around six months ago, I received a mail informing us that Chitra had expired. I kept thinking, why this piece of sad news disturbed me so much. Perhaps, because Chitra showed faith in me at a time when my parents also doubted if I’d be able to make a place for myself in this competitive world.

I guess I did her proud in my own little way. I guess she rests in a place, “Jahan gam bhi na ho, aansoon bhi na ho, bas pyaar hi pyaar pale.”

*****

Smriti Mudgal, a 2003 alumnus of the Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication (SIMC), Pune, anchors the Hindi channel CNBC-Awaaz from Mumbai.

You may see other tributes, like this one by Smriti, to Chitra ma’am in a “Facebook” group called “R.I.P Chitra ma’am …”. The only thing is, you have to be a member of “Facebook” and join the group, which is worthwhile, if only because you get a great chance to read about why students are always grateful to certain teachers.

Tell us about a teacher you recall with love and affection, here on this blog or elsewhere. But do send us the link.

This is another gift to you, my dear students, from … Santa Claus.

Warm regards,
- Joe.
Pune, 24 December 2008.

Mumbai attacks: one man's freedom-fighter is another man's terrorist

2008-12-24T14:44:00.010+05:30

My dear students,

Just like the proverb, “One man’s food is another man’s poison”, so also we may argue that one man’s freedom-fighter is another man’s terrorist or militant. I deliberately chose a provocative headline to focus on the place of perception and “ways of seeing” in journalism.

Ever since my school-mate Dr Vivek Pinto got to my blog, he has been deluging me with links, which he is sure (and I agree), will be useful for my students and anyone interested in the topics I take up “Against the Tide”.

Among his many links, one such gem is a thoughtful piece entitled, “Separating the Terror and the Terrorists” by Clark Hoyt, published in the New York Times (NYT) on 13 December 2008. Dr Vivek Pinto sent this topical piece for you, my dear students, because the issues that it instigates are "beyond mere semantics and word-play".

Somewhat like the reader’s editor or ombudsman in ethical Indian newspapers, Mr Hoyt, who became the NYT’s third public editor on May 14, 2007, is “the readers’ representative and responds to complaints and comments from the public and monitors the NYT’s journalistic practices. The public editor works outside of the reporting and editing structure of the NYT.”

The following is my edited version of Mr Hoyt’s biography. “After starting his newspaper career in 1966, Mr. Hoyt began working at the Detroit Free Press in 1968. He became Washington correspondent for The Miami Herald in 1970 and was later news editor of its Washington bureau. He was named managing editor of the Wichita (Kansas) Eagle-Beacon from 1981-85, before returning to Washington where he became bureau chief in 1987.

“He was Knight Ridder's vice president/news from 1993-99. And from 1999 until the sale of Knight Ridder, he was Washington editor, where the bureau received much praise in recent years for its aggressive reporting. Its journalists have won the George Polk, Overseas Press Club and Headliners awards, among many others.

“In 1973 Mr. Hoyt shared the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting with Robert S. Boyd for their coverage of Democratic vice presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton's history of treatment for severe depression. Mr Hoyt is a director of the foundation of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and a former chairman of the National Press Foundation. He is a graduate of Columbia College.”

*****

Though Dr Vivek Pinto sent me Mr Hoyt’s piece at once on 14 December, I have waited ten days -- for our emotions to cool down -- before putting it up. Maybe, I should have put it up at once, because some of you may have been grappling with some of the issues Mr Hoyt incites. But I prefer, from personal experience, to take things up in a detached way. One of the stalwarts of the Indian freedom struggle, Gobind Vallabh Pant, a chief minister of U.P., used to day, “Thanda karke khao.”

I have supplied Mr Hoyt’s bio-data, because I want you to take seriously what world-class professionals like him are saying. It will not do for journalists like us in India to be swayed by the local tide, especially the kind of mind-numbing repeats that were unloaded on Indian TV in the name of “breaking news” during the three days of 26-28 November 2008 and, following that relentless hammering, the jingoistic calls to “war” being made in the name of fighting against terror.

I am reminded of the Goebbels-like hysteria unleashed across the USA by Bush, Cheney & Co. after 11 September 2001. Later, the Bush administration manipulated “26/11” to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq. No wonder, an Iraqi TV journalist has become a hero after flinging his shoes at Mr Bush in Baghdad. You may refer to my 5 November 2008 post, “From Bush to Obama – The Killing will Continue”, for the drift of my arguments.

*****

Dr Vivek Pinto is a research fellow at the International Christian University, Tokyo. After his doctorate in the US, he taught there for some time; before moving to Japan. Earlier, he had worked for a few years at Kishore Bharati, a pioneering NGO in science education at a village in Hoshangabad district, Madhya Pradesh, en route to Jabalpur on the Itarsi line. Kishore Bharati was founded by Anil Sadgopal, a molecular biologist at TIFR, who was disillusioned with the way science was taught in schools and with his own research work.

Wishing you that joy and peace of Christmas, which only sharing with our less-fortunate fellow human beings can bring.

My warmest of regards in these cold nights,
- Joe.
Pune, 24 December 2008.

Mumbai: a people with a sense of purpose

2008-12-12T15:27:00.009+05:30

During the 26/11 terrorist attacks on Mumbai, people were hurt as they watched their beloved Mumbai being violated. Smriti Mudgal is one of them and here describes her love affair with Mumbai.

*****

By Smriti Mudgal

During 2000, I was working with a small company, which sold classified ad space for India Today. Every year they held a national sales conference in a city, where salesmen from all the offices would come and interact. This particular year, the venue was Le Meridien, Pune.

Our team started from Delhi and we went to Pune via Mumbai by train. When the train stopped at Mumbai, we got off at some station. I suppose it was Bandra. It was early morning, maybe 5 am, but the city was wide awake. I saw people rushing from one corner to the other, in a stupendous hurry.

“What was this sense of purpose, I never saw in Delhi?” I wondered.

It was a brief one-hour halt, after which we proceeded to Pune. During this one hour I had made up my mind, “I am going to come back to this city.”

On our way back from Pune, we again stopped at Bandra. This time, the train to Delhi was bound from Mumbai Central, so we set off in taxis for the station. I saw tall buildings, mostly painted in yellow distemper.

At the several traffic signals, I would look up and try to make out what kind of people were staying in those tiny houses. Sometimes, I would catch a glimpse of a string of clothes hanging in the rooms. At other times, I would see men and women peeping from the grilled windows.

Again, this urge of the middle class, trying to break into the melee on the streets, captured my mind.

I imagined that in a year or two, when I’d be earning 10,000 rupees, I would rent a one bedroom, hall, kitchen flat with a balcony in Mumbai. My one-BHK home would be on the fourth or fifth floor. When I looked down from my balcony, I would see lots of children playing down below. And they would call out to me.

*****

Four years it took, for me to realize my dream. After my stint at India Today, I enrolled for a mass communication course at Symbiosis in Pune. After I passed out in 2003, I joined CNBC-TV18 in Delhi as an assistant producer.

Year 2004, and CNBC-TV18 was shifting its headquarters to Mumbai. They asked me if I would like to move out with them. Without thinking twice about my family in Delhi, I agreed on the condition they would take a re-look at my salary.

So, on September 18, 2004, I boarded a Jet Airways flight to Mumbai. I was doubly excited, because I had never before travelled by air. However, the flight was boring after the 10 minutes of take-off. At the first line of clouds, I was tempted to jump out. But sanity prevailed and I only smiled at my co-passenger who by then had understood that it was the first time I had ever sat in an aeroplane.

We landed at Santa Cruz airport in the afternoon and were taken to a hotel in Bandra. The hotel was supposedly a 3-star; but the tiny rooms, smelling of dampness, made me wonder if our company was indeed as big as it claimed to be. On second thoughts, I realized maybe I was still not senior enough to be put up in a good hotel.

Seven in the evening, and it was drizzling. I’m not superstitious, but I do feel welcome if it rains in a city on my day of arrival. A Parsi family was celebrating someone’s wedding in the courtyard. I felt alone; I would be living in this city alone, on a salary of 12,000 rupees.

Suddenly, I was in a hurry, to find that one-BHK flat, I had dreamed of earlier.

*****

Living in Mumbai for almost five years, I now find my expectations were grand. I was aghast at the kind of accommodation available in 2004 for a rent of 5,000 rupees per month. A corner of a room, with one small iron cot and one small almirah was one of the best options shown to me. Till one Gujarati family friend came to my rescue.

This family friend had a relative who stayed with his son at Worli in a one-BHK flat. His neighbour wanted a girl who could stay in their flat and take care of it since they had shifted to Pune. So, I had my dream house, sprawled over a slum, overlooking Worli sea-face, for only 5,000 rupees. Yes, there were children too in the building, who quickly made friends with me.

I was in Mumbai now, living in Mehta Manor on the 4th floor, in a fully-furnished flat, overlooking the sea, with children in the courtyard, calling out my name every time they saw me looking out of the window. Sometimes, I went and played with the kids.

At the other times I would just stand at my window, stare out at the sea and, in the background, Abida Parveen would croon – Ishq mein tere, khoye hum. Sar pe liya, jo ho, so ho. (I took the step of falling in love with you, now, come what may.)

The neighbour stayed on the 5th floor with his young son. I got introduced to the young son one day; and before I knew it I was in love with this school drop-out who also happened to be four years younger than me.

The father came to know and showed his aversion to our relationship and I walked out of the beautiful flat at Worli to live in a single room at Lower Parel. This little room was a part of a slum rehabilitation building and, to say the most, was just about comfortable enough to house me.

The love affair continued clandestinely. But soon, the job, the meagre salary, started taking its toll of me and I shifted to NDTV-Profit in Delhi. The salary was a lot better. But somewhere, I was extremely unhappy: Mumbai was calling me back.

After eight months of dealing with the harrowing auto-rickshaw-walas of Delhi, and the forever-interfering Punjabi neighbours, I decided to go back to Mumbai and CNBC-Awaaz. My boss was kind enough to take me back and I was in Lower Parel again.

I met my 10th class drop-out boyfriend again; but he seemed to have moved on; I guess, I too had. Soon, I was in a relationship with a colleague and we decided to get married.

*****

In 2006, the 11 July train blasts happened. I was shaken; it took me six months to recover. I couldn’t believe somebody could think of planting bombs in local trains, carrying unsuspecting commuters. Though I had never travelled by local train, I also made sure that I wouldn’t travel long distance by any train any more.

I remember, my fiancé and I had to go to Vadodara by train and I just wouldn’t set foot on the train. I kept crying. After he consoled me, I went to my compartment and asked the passengers where they were going. As they answered, I kept guessing from their looks, if they were telling the truth.

After six months, I was back to normal. But I never recovered completely. Till date, I feel claustrophobic if I have to go to a railway station.

Two years had passed. In between I got married and my job became more secure. I became one of the senior anchors of the channel. Life, with its little twists and turns, was playing out; I was getting complacent.

*****

Then, one night as my husband Deep and I wrapped up our bulletins at half-past-ten, we saw the news channels flashing news of gunfire at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) and the Taj hotel. We stopped for a while to check in front of the TV, what it was about. We thought it was not serious. But by the time we reached home, we realized the increasing gravity of the situation.

For three days, our Hindi business news channel turned into a dedicated general news channel. My husband and I are non-market anchors as well. So we were taking turns in reporting the mayhem.

On the day of the final assault, as I was reading out the news of NSG commando Sandeep Unnikrishnan’s cremation, I got a lump in my throat and I just couldn’t continue any longer.

Vivid memories -- of the first time I went to the Taj with my 10th class drop-out boyfriend, when he had earned 7,000 rupees and spent 5,000 to formally propose to me -- the time I went to Café Leopold with my husband and we whispered to each other how it looked like a shady, hippie joint -- to the time I went to Marine Drive after coming back to Mumbai from Delhi and declared to my parents, “This is it, I have found home.” -- all came flooding back to me.

Today, as I describe my love affair with Mumbai, my dear teacher Joseph Pinto comes to my mind. He called me up after the Mumbai mayhem, because he thought I looked sad as I read the news, and reminded me to smile.

I will smile, Sir, because Mumbai has given me love not once or twice, but very many times –- in great neighbours, in the lovely children of my building, my bosses, the restaurants I frequent.

This sinfully charming city has taught me to love unconditionally. And I shall love it all my life.

*****

Smriti Mudgal, a 2003 alumnus of the Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication (SIMC), Pune, anchors the Hindi channel CNBC-Awaaz from Mumbai. You may get in touch with her at Smriti.Mudgal@network18online.com. After writing this 1,561-word tribute to the Mumbai she loves, Smriti says she feels much better. Other readers of this blog are welcome to describe and post their own affairs with the city they love.

Warm regards,
- Joe.
Pune, Friday, 12 December 2008.

No room for gifts in journalism

2008-12-03T13:02:00.004+05:30

By Abhay Vaidya

I entered the profession in Pune in 1987, after my journalism degree from the University of Pune's Department of Communication and Journalism (popularly know as “Ranade Institute”).

Almost every single Press Conference (PC) then concluded with a “gift-giving ceremony”, during which the organisers would hand each journalist a gift-wrapped box. It would mostly be a costly pen. Sometimes, the gifts would be far more expensive – a clock, a wrist-watch, digital organiser or some such thing – depending on whether the PC was organised by some business entity.

It would sadden some of us immensely when poorly-funded NGOs or labour unions, calling a PC about some wage dispute, also succumbed to this practice of giving gifts to journalists, on the advice of their PR consultants.

There were some of us who were extremely uncomfortable with this convention. It would often be a nuisance for us to refuse these gifts because the PR person and the PC organisers would plead with us to “accept their token of love and affection”. The usual practice was to take the gifts home or give them away to grateful peons at office, turn-by-turn, or, as one journalist did, give them to some charity.

One particular incident alarmed the Pune journalists, when this business of "the giving and taking of gifts" soiled the reputation of the entire fraternity. A small furniture dealer had called a PC, one afternoon. He was advised by some journalists to re-schedule the PC at night, after work, when things could be discussed “in a relaxed environment” (over drinks and dinner). The person obliged; the PC was a happy-happy affair with a lot of mirth and wise-cracks.

Then came the issue of the parting gift.

Someone in the room suggested that a raffle be held and that one of the revolving office chairs that the dealer was launching be given away as a gift to the winner. Everyone liked the idea and someone won the chair. There was then a murmur about others being left out so, finally, the dealer had chairs delivered to the homes of each of the journalists present at that PC.

Normally, evening PCs would have high attendance from anyone “posing” as a journalist, because of the drinks-dinner-gifts culture. At another PC, the organiser complained that a mini tape recorder had been stolen; the suspicion fell on someone “posing” as a journalist.

These two incidents, in particular, alarmed many journalists. A few of us in the executive committee of the Pune Union of Working Journalists (PUWJ) decided to call a meeting on the subject.

I vividly remember that meeting in the basement of the Savarkar Bhavan (near Bal Gandharva Rangmandir, Shivajinagar, Pune), because there was a heated discussion. Many of my seniors, such as the late Varunraj Bhide of Sakal; the late BM Purandare of the Times of India; Anand Agashe, currently Editor-Director of the Sakaal Media Group; Kiran Thakur, then Bureau Chief (UNI), and who recently retired as the Head of the Department from which I passed out; and others participated.

One group had then proposed that the PUWJ should not only ban press conferences after 9pm but also introduce a rule that no gifts should be distributed at PCs.

There was no unanimity on the subject and the meeting was inconclusive. The issue, however, became a talking point in Pune and Mumbai, because I ran a news-item about the PUWJ discussion in the Mumbai edition of The Times of India (there was no Pune edition then).

***

There are countless anecdotes of how low journalists can stoop to receive gifts.

PR firms and executives don't hesitate to give gift-vouchers or even cash in envelopes. One well known journalist in Delhi was not present for a PC, but wanted his gift and instructed the PR person to have it delivered.

In Mumbai, there are journalists who have tie-ups with pan-wallahs outside their offices so that they can deposit their gifts with them before entering their office building. I heard of some journalists in Mumbai enquiring about gifts being doled out and then deciding to attend PCs.

The issue of journalists accepting gifts has been discussed at the highest level in our profession, from time to time. I remember Arun Shourie calling for a comprehensive Code of Conduct for journalists.

I also recall an edit-page article by, I think, C. R. Irani in The Statesman. That article mentioned that during interviews for a business journalist, one candidate proposed that instead of receiving a salary, he would instead pay the company some amount for being appointed as a business journalist. In that article, which appeared in the mid-1990s, Irani estimated that a business journalist in Mumbai could make upto Rs.70,000/- per month through gifts and gift-cheques.

Sometime in the 1990s, The Times of India, where I worked for about 14 years in Pune and Washington DC, USA, introduced a "no-gifts policy" for their journalists. People coming with gift boxes, particularly during Diwali and New Year, are politely instructed by the security desk to take back the gifts.

The variety of PCs, I attended in Washington DC, USA, were conducted professionally and there was no gift-giving.

When the subject of gifts comes up, I fondly refer to my 1994 copy of The Washington Post Deskbook on Style which begins with a chapter on "Standards and Ethics" by one of the great gurus of journalism, Ben Bradlee.

Bradlee says it there: “We pay our own way. We accept no gifts from news sources…”

Gifts in journalism are a form of bribe and should be declined.

One can be fastidious about it, as is one of my colleagues, who refuses to accept even a pen, because he says journalism is the source of his livelihood, so he will not write with a pen gifted at a PC.

I have not been as fastidious as my friend and have accepted gifts on certain occasions, based on my judgement. On other occasions, I have given a return-gift in the form of a book, as I did with a politician who sent me two books of JRD Tata's letters and keynote speeches.

I remember the story of our former President Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam declining to accept an expensive crystal and mentioning how, as a child, he was taught by his father not to accept gifts that came with a purpose.

There is no room for gifts in journalism.

Abhay Vaidya,
Pune, 3 December 2008.

(Mr. Vaidya is currently Deputy Resident Editor of the Pune edition of DNA. His email ID is abhaypvaidya@gmail.com. His contribution was made, at my request, in response to queries raised by Smita Aggarwal and Amith Prabhu (see my post "Working one's way up and other queries" . I am grateful to him for sharing his experiences in his typical forthright manner - shorn of adjectives and adverbs; packed with facts. - Joe.)

Buy Nothing Day - Consume Less

2008-11-26T18:10:00.002+05:30

My dear students,

One of the most thought-provoking websites that I have come across is: www.adbusters.org. The guys are from Canada, but they get back echoes from all over. They also call themselves the “Culture Jammers”. Especially those of you sitting on the razor-thin fence between “Editorial” on one side and "Ad-PR" on the other, must have a close look at these people.

“Buy Nothing” is what they are planning to do on Friday, November 28. Sorry for the snap notice, but I glanced at their website just by chance to include them in my “Websites of Influence”. Here is how their line goes:

“Suddenly, we ran out of money and, to avoid collapse, we quickly pumped liquidity back into the system. But behind our financial crisis a much more ominous crisis looms: we are running out of Nature … fish, forests, fresh water, minerals, soil. What are we going to do when supplies of these vital resources run low?

“There’s only one way to avoid the collapse of this human experiment of ours on Planet Earth: we have to consume less. It will take a massive mindshift. You can start the ball rolling by buying nothing on November 28th.

“Then celebrate Christmas differently this year, and make a New Year’s resolution to change your lifestyle in 2009. It’s now or never!”

I have been following their “Less is more … & Better” (this is my dearly-held belief that goes beyond “omit the needless word”) campaign in the form of their “Buy Nothing Day” appeal. I hope this rings a bell for you too.

Warm regards,

- Joe.
Pune, 26 November 2008.

The clarity of poetry

2008-11-20T23:06:00.007+05:30

My dear students,

POEMS are not for reporters, to read. Though I like poetry, that is what I used to prescribe in class. And also believe today, because poems do not consist of facts. But recently some of my students, especially Gauri Gharpure of Kolkata (who plays a cool blog, where “Life rules”) and some readers of my blog (who are into the “imagination” touch), have provoked me into re-thinking my stand.

Gauri shared with me a thought by a Russian poet, Mikhail Kuzmin (1872-1936), in which he calls for fellow poets “to seek beauty in the natural and physical world of their environment – to be industrious in language and vision in order to reflect the realness of the subject.”

This is what Kuzmin said in a 1910 address, “I beg you be logical in the design and structure of your work, in syntax . . . be a skillful builder, both in small things and in the whole . . . love words, as Flaubert did, exercise economy in your means, thrift in the use of words, precision and authenticity – then you will discover the secret of a wonderful thing: beauty clarity."

Those words became part of the mainfesto for a trend in poetry called “Acme-ism”, whose significant leading poets were Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilëv, and Osip Mandelstam. The link to Kuzmin is from the website of the Academy of American Poets http://www.poets.org/, which itself is a treasure. The Kuzmin collection, at Dalhousie University in Canada, available in electronic form and compiled by John Barnstead, can be accessed at this link. Dive into its riches.

Shown the quote without being told it was by a poet, I would have sworn it was by a journalist. For, as a journalist, I believe and practise what it says. I have been re-writing this piece with “thrift in the use of words, precision and authenticity” and when a word goes false, I cancel it out.

An editing tip I draw from Kuzmin is, “Omit needless words”. That was an advice William Strunk Jr. gave E.B. White, who was a student at Cornell in 1919. Strunk collected his advice in a “little book” called “The Elements of Style”. White revised his teacher’s textbook in 1959. Besides R.P. and T.J.S. George, Strunk & White should also permeate our style, stripping the text of needless gossip. Here is the link to Strunk's astute guide on the Elementary Principles of Composition

Now reporters, I dare say, ought to read poems. Unlearning, for me at 58, has been fun. But aren't reporters becoming endangered in today’s TV-driven world? There are the poets who can sing like the birds. But where are the poets who can describe like the reporters?

Warm regards,

- Joe.
Pune, 20 November 2008.

From Bush to Obama – The Killing will Continue

2008-11-05T17:23:00.001+05:30

Dear students,

At the risk of being branded cynical, I have chosen the above headline to celebrate the victory of Barack Obama, modifying it from the headline of an alert, “From Blair to Brown – The Killing will Continue”, dated 23 July 2007, published by one of my favourite websites “Media Lens”.

We know the importance of the first para in any story (the intro, or the lead, or the lede); how it ought to hook you and make you want to read on. Here is the first para of the above piece, published by Media Lens when Gordon Brown took over in 2007 from Tony Blair, who had become the British prime minister in 1997.

“The first truth of American foreign policy is that it is formulated to maximise corporate profits and state power. The second truth is that it is perennially sold to the public as a mission to spread freedom, democracy and human rights. The third truth is that the first two truths apply regardless of whether the Republicans or Democrats hold power.” (Taken from “From Blair to Brown – The Killing will Continue”, Media Lens Alert, 23 July 2007.

This direct and heavy dose of reality is required to counter-balance the heady hysteria that may engulf you, given that a “black” man has become the 44th president of the USA.

The authors of the above piece go on to address the moorings of British foreign policy itself:

“The first truth of British foreign policy is that it is also formulated to serve elite power. The second truth is that it is rooted in unwavering support for US policy, including participation in attacks on defenceless Third World targets – the reason London, not Stockholm, has been subject to September 11-style suicide attacks.

"The third truth is that this foreign policy is always sold in a way that echoes US claims of humanitarian intent, so lending a veneer of international legitimacy and support. It is of course very much easier for a “coalition” to claim to be expressing “the will of the international community” than it is for a rogue superpower acting alone.

"The fourth truth is that these truths apply regardless of whether Labour or Conservatives hold power. Finally, because the collision between the reality and appearance of policy becomes increasingly obvious over time, the fifth truth is that a change of British government is always said to herald a change to a more moral foreign policy. This transformed policy is always said to be driven by idealistic new minds acting out of revulsion at past ‘mistakes’ – the slate can thus be wiped clean and media gullibility rebooted to the default setting.”

If you read Indian newspapers (between the lines) and watch our TV channels (between the images), you will grasp the truth of what the authors say. With the signing of the nuclear deal, India too is slowly becoming part of US foreign policy. And if Obama starts to signal that attacks on “defenceless Third World targets” like Pakistan are called for, in order to flush out the terrorists, I am sure the Indian government will jump to the bait.

Like my lectures on truth and objectivity, this piece is like the tip of an iceberg: intended to arouse and provoke. Please navigate the links and comment here itself. Remember, “Comment is free, but facts are sacred.”

Warm regards,

- Joe.

Pune, Wednesday, 5 November 2008.

Working one's way up and other queries

2008-10-28T11:33:00.000+05:30

Dear students,

You have been gracious to read my blog and respond. In a personal email to me, rather than a direct comment on my blog, which is what I prefer, Amith Prabhu asks about:
a) the importance of working one’s way up, rather than wanting to be in top posts and failing miserably, which some manage to do.
b) the difference between work in a PR consultancy and Corporate Communication. Many students in communications are confused with this, and I feel a good Corp Comm professional should have PR consultancy experience.
c) the growing need for ethics and discipline in careers.

Let me take the areas, one by one. I’ll take up (b) first. And then (a) and (c) together.

b) The difference between work in a PR consultancy and Corporate Communication. Many students in communications are confused with this, and I feel a good Corp Comm professional should have PR consultancy experience.

The difference between any field of communication arises due to “where you are”.

For example, by personal communication, we mean “one-on-one” communication where we speak with someone -- face-to-face in a meeting or over a meal; on the phone; send an SMS by mobile phone; write a letter or email. This communication is always two-way; in the case of letters, SMS or email, there is a time lag. The idea of “chat” came up in order to enhance the two-way feel, while on the mobile or computer.

Then we have “one-on-many” communication – personally as in a lecture, a public speech; in writing, as in a newspaper or magazine; in the form of listening to the disembodied voice on radio; or the semblance (illusion) of voice and person on TV; access to the Internet. Here it’s essentially one-way communication, though we have efforts at enhancing feedback, through letters to the editor (in print); phone-ins (on radio and TV); online websites of papers and TV channels, etc. Also this blog!

What about “many-to-one” communication? In the form of impact on the individual person from various messages bombarding him/her through various channels like daily life (in the home, family, street, at work); through print, music, radio, TV, the Internet, etc. You can add to this list.

***

I am getting into basic communication (like R.P. in “Basic Journalism”), because similar principles are applicable to PR and Corp Comm. Ask yourself the question, “Where am I, the sender of messages, vis-à-vis my publics”?

If you are in a mass media organisation like a paper, website, radio/TV station, then you are in direct contact with the general public, giving you enormous power (without responsibility?).

In a PR consultancy, that is, located outside corporate entities and the mass media, you work for individual clients (generally companies, but also maybe individuals), whose messages you try to direct towards specific “publics” – like the client’s customers, share-holders, investors, suppliers, dealers, employees (current and potential), the government, and even rivals or competitors.

In Corporate Communication, you are located right inside the corporate entity, like a private limited company. Here your “publics” are the customers, employees (current and potential), suppliers, vendors, dealers. But you are in communication with them in a much more direct and personal way than if you were in a PR consultancy or mass media. Actually, in Corp Comm, you would be dealing with your advertisement agency and your PR consultancy also in order to influence your “publics”.

***

Since I have worked in newspapers, and come up from the ranks – right from the stringer level in 1977, to sub-editor in 1983, to chief-sub in 1984, to assistant editor in 1989 and finally as editor of a newspaper in 2004 (with a seven-year stint in Corp Comm from 1996-2003) – I have seen the world of mass communication from “both sides”.

My advice would be: do a stint in mass media first – print, radio, TV, online. Then, if you wish, do a stint in Corp Comm to get a feel for the corporate world from the inside. And then go into a PR consultancy. This is like moving from the wider world into more specialised worlds. It helps to have the bigger view first and then get closer down to the specifics.

Dear students, I feel a good PR consultant should have mass media and, then, Corp Comm experience – in that order. But you can go the other way too: PR experience first and then Corp Comm. The important thing to do, while reflecting on your experiences and learning your lessons, is to constantly ask yourself the basic communication question, “Where am I, the sender of messages, vis-à-vis my publics”?

Your ability to influence the opinion of your “publics” is critically dependent on where you are located in the chain. This is because of the issue of “credibility”.

The most insidious power of the corporate world (with the help of PR agencies) to influence the opinions of people is due to its money-power (lobbying) and, therefore, its ability to buy journalists and the mass media directly or indirectly. More of this ideology stuff, later.

But let me come back to your question. Yes, you need experience in both Corp Comm and PR consultancy. But be careful, you tread dangerous territory: manipulation of news, filtering only what creates a favourable image of your client, etc. What I call, lying and deception.

Look at the collapse of the US stock markets due to “irresponsible lending” for housing in USA. At that time, though, credit was glorified; and investment banks and their securities were projected as being “safe bets”. Even today, in India, credit finance is available for housing and vehicles, without checking the ability to repay.

***

And now to the second part of Amith’s questions:
a) the importance of working one’s way up, rather than wanting to be in top posts and failing miserably, which some manage to do.
c) the growing need for ethics and discipline in careers.

Let me share my own experience. As I have narrated, I started as a sub-editor on 2 May 1983 at Maharashtra Herald, Pune with a salary of Rs.600/- and then rose slowly to become an editor in 2003 at Gomantak Times, Panaji, Goa: “working one’s way up”, as Amith puts it, for 20 years. The advantage is I know the ropes and the job/tasks at every level. Finally, when I was at the top and gave instructions, I knew what it’s like to implement orders. Also, the chances are that power does not go to my head and I am more likely to be considerate of journalists at lower levels.

I don’t know about it is like “wanting to be in top posts and failing miserably, which some manage to do”. Amith, or some other student of mine, will have to explain what it means to be in that situation.

***

As for the growing need for ethics, I would point to honesty and not allowing the marketing or circulation people to dictate what and how news is to be portrayed. Editors are capable of understanding the business side of a paper.

Let me refer you to C.P. Scott’s 1921 essay on the centenary of the Manchester Guardian where he says, “A newspaper has two sides to it. It is a business, like any other, and has to pay in the material sense in order to live. But is much more than a business; it is an institution; it reflects and it influences the life of a whole community …”

Scott goes on to identify character – “honesty, cleanness, courage, fairness, a sense of duty to the reader and the community”. Here you also find the famous lines, “Comment is free, but facts are sacred.” That seven-word line calls for an entire post on my blog.

The link is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2002/nov/29/1
Once you’ve read the essay, I’d like to discuss the matter further.

***

As for “discipline in careers”, stick to one job for at least one or two years, a sufficient time to learn. I would give the job three years to teach me; you may not want to be so patient. Recall the saying, “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” This means, if you change jobs too often, you may not give yourself enough time to accumulate experience. Also, identify what you want to learn and whom you’re going to learn it from. Fortunately, there are lots of serious journalists out there. I am compiling a list, which I will not post on my blog, but will send to you only on request.

Above all, dear students, do not allow money to decide what you’re doing. My experience and conversation with journalists tells me that the jobs that pay the most are also the ones that tie down your hands and feet; worse, you’ll also have to keep your eyes and ears shut too. We will discuss this issue at length some time.

Am I sounding scary? I don’t intend to; but it’s wise to be cautious, under the circumstances. When a student asked me in class, “Sir, what do you think of the market collapse?” I answered, “When thieves fall out, honest men (and women) come into their own.” Dear students, pluck the courage to remain honest.

Warm regards,

- Joe.

Make your comments, here itself

2008-10-22T13:02:00.000+05:30

Dear students,

I am so thrilled that you are reading my blog carefully and sending me your valued comments. However, you are sending these comments to me personally on my email comment. So your response is not reflected in the comments here.

One of the reasons for starting "Against the Tide" is to bring ALL my students, no matter who and where in this wide world they are, on to the same platform or under the same umbrella (which ever you prefer). So that you can meet and interact. So please, comment here itself, so that you can use my blog to get in touch with other like-minded journalists and vice versa.

You know I have always been candid and open about my views and opinions, even in class. And now writing here in the public domain of a blog, I do not intend to hold back. On the contrary, I am becoming upset by what is happening in the mass media, what with "Breaking News" and "Page 3" (even on TV). At the moment, I am responding to the urgent request from my students for useful material and not indulging in too much ideological stuff. Therefore, I need your questions as well as areas of concern so that "Against the Tide" becomes a lively place.

To set the tone: "I disagree with every word you say. But I shall defend to my death, your right to say it." Now who said that, when and in what context?

Warm regards,

- Joe Pinto.

A first list of useful books and websites

2008-10-12T19:05:00.001+05:30

Dear students, colleagues and friends,

Here is a list of useful books and websites. I'll keep adding to this list as we go along and you get back to me.

Firstly: Basic Journalism by Rangaswami Parthasarathy ("RP").
This is the first book I recommend to all my students of print journalism as a "MUST BUY", since I started teaching at the Department of Communication and Journalism, University of Pune, opposite Roopali, in 1987 at the nudging of my senior colleague Kiran Thakur, who was then bureau chief at UNI, Pune, and now retired as Head of the same department.

As a colleague, Prasannakumar Aklujkar, keeps reminding me, even though the technology of writing and editing keeps changing rapidly and we get newer and sharper software packages by the day, the skills and techniques of editing of a sub-editor remain more or less the same since the days when scribes put pencil to paper.

For example, thinking-rethinking; grasping and understanding; writing-rewriting; correct spelling and punctuation; the inverted pyramid; sequencing; writing precise and simple leads or intros; an eye-grabbing headline; crisp and concise description; and above all, clear thinking that leads to clear writing (George Orwell). So, it's RP for you.

Another book that I picked out for you, my dear students and friends, from my personal collection is The Economist Style Guide.

While I disagree with most of the free-marketeering contents and right-wing opinions of this newspaper (not magazine), I recommend this lucidly readable weekly without reservation ONLY for its prose style - a mastery of clear and precise description. (Another colleague, Ashok Gopal, would recommend it for its science and technology pieces.)

Viva Books has brought out an Indian edition, so buy a copy. This style guide is also accessible on the Internet, if you register with The Economist. You ought to practise the advice given in the Introduction, if you aspire to rise above the hacks. And the warning by John Grimond in "A Note on Editing" about "de-sophistication" is worth every word.

Keep a look-out for style guides of various newspapers. Go to amazon.com and you'll find cheap used copies of great style guides from the Associated Press (AP), Reuters, UPI, The Times of London, etc. The Statesman of Kolkata also has a superb style guide. Tell your favourite "small is beautiful" bookshop (not "big is ugly" chain-store) to keep an eye for and get second-hand copies of these style guides for your shelf.

The first website I direct you to is: http://www.journalism.org/.

This is the website of the "Project for Excellence in Journalism" set up by the Pew Research Center, USA. Navigate around it like some ancient explorer and you'll discover gems to last your lifetime. A stunner is the "Advice to Students", which I have copied out for you below:

***

Advice for Students Interested in a Career in Journalism
Bill Kovach, Senior Counselor of the Project for Excellence in Journalism

"A curious mind and a broad liberal arts education are by far the best qualifications for a career in journalism.

The best foundation begins with an undergraduate liberal arts education that exposes you to a wide range of disciplines of study and helps you supplement your native curiosity with a habit of critical thinking. Whatever course of study you follow, be sure to include a strong foundation in ethics. Then consider study at a university that offers a graduate degree in journalism.

You can begin to develop your skill in the "craft" of journalism by working on a college newspaper or radio station; a television station that features a college report; or working as a college correspondent for a local, regional or national news organization. As for experience while still in school and immediately after graduation, think about immersing yourself in a local experience. Working in a community in which you must look the people in the eye about whom you report before and AFTER you have reported on them can provide very important lessons.

And, throughout all this, read. Read everything you can, including classics in fiction that can help you begin to understand human nature and the human condition. Develop a habit of critically following the work of other journalists and find models for your own work.

Good luck."

***

And then, there will be others. For that, you will have to ask. As the good man says in the good book, "Ask and you shall Receive. Seek and you will Find. Knock and the Door shall be Opened."

- Joe Pinto.
Sunday, 10 October 2008, Pune.

Hi to all my students

2008-10-02T18:19:00.000+05:30

Dear students,

I have been wanting to start this blog for a long time, as a way of keeping in touch with you. I shall post stuff here that I would have brought up in class or would have been discussing with you, if you were in touch with me.

I did try to start off a forum on Orkut called "Serious Journalism" but it didn't get anywhere; I don't know why. So I am starting off this blog, since some of my students who are clued in to the Internet said that would be a nice way to keep in touch with you all.

You all know how I have enjoyed your company and how I have been stimulated or, sometimes, even provoked by your questions. With me, you get what you see, and you see what you get. I've done that in real life and I propose to do that on my blog.

That is also indicated in the title I've chosen for my blog, "Against the Tide."

I read a fine blog called, "Life Rules", by one of my students, Gauri Gharpure, from the Dept. of Journalism and Communication, University of Pune. I am sure some of my other students must have also started blogs by now. But I am yet to know of them.

Warm regards,

Joe Pinto.

P.S.: Have I stuck to my own rule? Not more than 4-5 characters per word, and not more than 10 words per sentence?