In the past few months, I have come across a few interesting magazines which I think are worth talking about.

One of them is The Caravan – A Journal of Politics and Culture. I quite like their style of in-depth reporting. It is unlike the other national magazines which have reduced themselves to sensational headlines and shallow content. As the editorial mission of The Caravan says:

The Caravan has been shaped as India’s first narrative journalism magazine a la The New Yorker, Harpers, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Review of Books in United States, and Granta and Prospect in the UK.  It is a change from the linear ways of reporting, a change from impersonal, dry facts, to a narrative story with perspective.

The issue I bought lives up to this mission statement. And I hope they continue to do so in the subsequent issues, unlike many magazines which give a promising start but fail to live-up to the original values. The OPEN magazine, to cite a name that I easily remember, did start off with a unique set of characteristics – giving alternative views, showcasing stories that were not picked up by the mainstream bunch of journals and so on. However, since then, they slowly seem to be slipping into the “do anything to grab eyeballs” business. I do hope they fix this and return to what they were doing about a year ago.

The other magazine, rather a sidekick (if I may call it) to the primary Tehelka magazine, is the Tehelka’s “Original Fiction” issue. It is essentially a collection of short works of fiction in the pulp noir genre by some really wonderful writers. Tarun Tejpal explains the idea behind “Original Fictions” in his editorial letter:

But for one brief week, at the end of every year, TEHELKA lets go. It hands its pages over to the artisans of fiction, leaving them free to decode the world as they choose, with sense or no sense. To the critics — who wonder at such whimsicality — we say, it’s only a fleeting interlude, the stars of reality are straining at the wings ready to regain the stage. So take a deep breath, shake your head, perhaps locate a fresh perspective.

Some of the short stories are brilliant. Do check out the first one written by Atul Sabharwal. And a surprise entry in this list was Devdutt Patanaik, who I thought restricted himself only to mythology. It is an interesting collection and while some of the stories could have been better, the entire package is worth reading.

Another magazine that I came across, albeit online, was Guernica. In addition to the poignant articles and fresh perspectives that this online magazine carries, the site itself is very beautifully designed. If art and politics are what you feed on, Guernica should satiate you quite well.

Bangalore traffic (and I can’t seem to get enough of it) can be partially dealt with. Indeed. If you take more than an hour to get to your work place then one thing you can do to utilize all that commute time is listen to audio books on your phone or mp3 player. If you don’t take more than an hour to reach your workplace, you definitely don’t stay in Bangalore and can ignore the rest of this post. Unless, of course, you are a fan of my writings.

All you need to do is buy an audio book or download one from the hundreds of free AND legal versions available out there. While the audio versions of new books are relatively expensive, there are hundreds of classics which are in the public domain and are available for free download!

Legally free? Yes. Head over to OpenCulture and check out the catalogue there. The caveat is that only classics are available for free. But then, when were you going to sit down and start reading all the classics? Never. So it makes sense to be done with them while driving through all that mess of this city. If not anything, you definitely will come across as a well-read road-ragist.

I have finished two audio books in the recent past: Stephen Hawking’s The Grand Design and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. The Grand Design has been shared over at InGoodBooks.com.

I am now reading, er, listening to E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View. The only drawback I see (hear?) with audio books is that it is difficult to appreciate fine writing while listening to it. Sure, a book like Hawking’s can be listened to since the core there is the idea, the concept. In Forster’s book, for instance, the emphasis is more on the writing styles, the metaphors, the juxtaposition of prose over a poetic framework – all a tad difficult to infuse in your literary senses while you are avoiding potholes and other fellow motorists.

Nevertheless, an audiobook is worth giving your ear to. If not anything else, it will keep you well-insulated from those seemingly clever music radio stations and their mind-numbing RJs and the singularly inane music that they dish out in between screams of sponsor company names and equally mind-numbing advertisements. Enjoy, ladies and gentlemen.

Excerpts from Matthew Stewart’s book The Management Myth: Management Consulting Past, Present and Largely Bogus have been adapted in this article at the Independent: Masters of illusion, The great management consultancy swindle.

He talks about management consultancy and makes for really funny reading (perhaps funny for the non-consultants alone?). Excerpts:

On how he got his first break

I landed the job by providing a credible response to this question: How many pubs are there in Great Britain? The purpose of that question, I realised after the interview, was to see how easily I could talk about a subject of which I knew almost nothing, on the basis of facts that were almost entirely fictional. It was an excellent introduction to management consulting.

On his inspirations and ‘tools’

“The Whale” is a graph. Its official title is “Cumulative Customer Profitability” and it also goes by the generic name “skew chart”. The Whale is my madeleine. One glance at its distinctive curves and in my mind I’m back, cutting and pasting charts and text, running through airports, hovering over a transparency projector in front of sceptical men in suits, and trading boozy stories with team-mates in an overpriced hotel restaurant.

I learned the art of whale-hunting – as we called the art of landing a big client – from a partner I will call Roland. He was a jolly, well-rounded figure, with a face like a pink bowling ball. He had a thick French accent and drew heavily on a limited stockpile of American colloquialisms, cheerfully painting the world in the bold strokes and primary colours, in a style typical of those who live their lives in a foreign language.

In the firm, Roland was the harpooner. His specialty was sinking the barbed hook of our services deep within the flesh of unsuspecting clients. Roland would say: “I asked Joe (or whoever the client was) ‘Joe, can your people tell you, right now, which of your customers are profitable?’” (It always sounded like he was calling them “profiteroles”.) Joe would have had no idea how his profiteroles were doing.

In fact the entire piece is hilarious, so I will stop pasting excerpts. Go ahead and read the complete article.

Here is another writer whose writings I have found very interesting, insightful, witty and wry – Faiza S. Khan. I have not read any of her other works except for those published in the OPEN Magazine, and each one of those makes for wonderful reading.

Click here to read Faiza’s Articles – I strongly recommend “Leap of Faith” and “My Name is Khan, Too”

Faiza is from across the border, but should that really matter? It should not, but yet, somehow, that description was the primary reason that drew me to read her very first article. Why is that? And incidentally, she does touch upon this in one of her articles.

Here are some interesting links (most of which I had tweeted on Twitter already):

1. First-year Grad Student Wins Nobel Prize in Economics – A brilliant parody!

2. I have No Problem – A wonderful poem, must read. Obtained via Prof. Abinandan.

3. Pathetic, Useless – Dilip D’Souza’s insightful (and witty) article on the logic of MNS hating ‘outsiders’.

4. The Infinite To-Do List – An Entrepreneur’s nightmare! Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize.

Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a known combination. A combination that has enthralled millions of readers globally with its tag line ‘A Trilogy in Four Parts’. (In fact, there was a 5th book released too and that is for the trivia pursuers).

Hitchhiker’s was a fabulous book with its quirky characters. But for someone who does not really like science fiction and fantasy, the series failed to hold its appeal after the second book. I read the final book with a mutual sense of goodbye and repeated its title “So long, and thanks for all the fish” at its conclusion.

Adams’ Last Chance to See, co-authored with zoologist Mark Carwardine, is a wonderful book, equally or more funny than Hitchhiker’s and at the same time conveying the seriousness of the dangers that various animal species on our planet are facing.

Commissioned by the Observer Colour Magazine, Douglas and Mark set out around the world to those places where certain animals were on the endangered list (perhaps some of them are no longer around). This journey takes them to meet the Komodo Dragons in Indonesia, the Aye-Aye in Madagascar and the Yangtze River Dolphin in China to name a few. Douglas’ perceptive remarks on the conditions of these animals and their countries forms a major part of the book. While Mark provides a zoologist’s view on the proceedings, Douglas’ commentary borders on philosophy and a satirical take on how the human species is running amok damaging this planet with utter disregard to its fellow co-inhabitants.

The book opens with the line “This isn’t at all what I expected” and chances are pretty good that you would feel the same as you leaf through this book written by an author better known for his travels through the infinite cosmos rather than lurking around forests and rivers on Earth. In an ironical way, it makes sense that someone who wrote about the galaxy was asked to write about the goings on of a planet that is showing no signs of curbing its ruthless massacre of other animals.

Take the case of The Yangtze River Dolphin which relies on sound for all its navigation needs. Now, the river is filled with huge boats driven by diesel engines that are loud enough to blank out all spectrums of sound frequencies. Amidst this noise, the Yantze River Dolphin is unable to hear anything clearly and more often than not finds itself crashing into ship propellers and other man-made artifacts on the water surface. Douglas and Mark, accompanied by a camera technician, dip their microphone right into the river and record the noise. All they hear is a loud constant blast! Such is the area in which the dolphin struggles to survive. The book is replete with many such insightful observations about animals that are nearing their last phase on Earth.

Read the book for two reasons: a) To know the fate of many of our fellow species on this planet and b) to marvel at how a serious topic can be broached and addressed without being preachy.

Ladies and gentlemen, enjoy.

Happy to inform that my book “Neumonia and Other Sketch Stories” is now also available at Blossoms Bookstore, Bangalore. Grab your copy today!

Book details here: http://www.sketchstories.com

In this interesting article in The New York Times, Anand Giridharadas, talks about his feelings towards India, a country he only fleetingly knew as his parents had settled in the US of A.  After spending 6 years in India and now departing back to the States, Anand reflects back on how his attitude towards India has changed. Poignant, I say.
Early years:

My cousins in India would sometimes ask if I was Indian or American. I saw that their self-esteem depended on my answer. “American,” I would say, because it was the truth, and because I felt that to say otherwise would be to accept a lower berth in the world.

And now:

But the greatest change I have witnessed is elsewhere. It is in the mind: Indians now know that they don’t have to leave, as my parents left, to have their personal revolutions.

Read the complete article here.

Link submitted by Giri Giridhar at The Better India.

Forbes India carries this wonderful article on Dr. Devi Shetty and his Narayana Hrudyalaya Institute of Cardiac Sciences. While the world over cardiac surgeries are very expensive, Dr. Shetty has managed to bring down the costs significantly.
The article talks about his “Wal-mart approach to healthcare” which is essentially using scale to negotiate costs. The article says:

Scale helped Shetty shave off costs of medical tests too. Take blood gas analysis. At Rs. 350-400 per test, it forms the bulk of the cost for an ICU patient in India. At Narayana Hrudyalaya it costs merely Rs. 8.50 per test!

Read the complete article: The World’s Largest Heart Factory

Mahendra Ved writes this article on Gujaratis at The New Straits.

The late Prince Klaus of the Netherlands once said how impressed he was in the 1940s at the way a provision store in front of his house in Africa, run by a Gujarati family, virtually never closed. Every member of the family took turns manning it.

Eighty per cent of all diamonds sold in the world are polished in Surat’s 10,000 diamond units. The only non-Jews in the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem diamond bourse are Gujaratis, who have an impressive presence in Antwerp, the world’s biggest diamond hub. Hence, between 2004-5 and 2007-8, Surat’s middle class doubled in size and its poor reduced by a third.

India’s wealthiest man, Mukesh Ambani of Reliance, is Gujarati. Forbes says he is the world’s fifth richest man, worth US$43 billion. Azim Premji of IT giant Wipro is Gujarati. He is the world’s 21st richest man, worth US$17 billion.

Ten of the 25 richest Indians are Gujarati.

And this:

South Asia’s two greatest leaders, Mahatma Gandhi and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, were both Gujaratis from trading communities, one a Bania, the other a Khoja.

Read the complete article here. And er yes, this warranted blogging considering that my roots are in Gujarat and I speak the language.