A wonderful article in The New Yorker on R K Narayan.
R K Narayan is one of my favourite English writers.

Wyatt Mason writes:

Sainthood is a kind of legacy, but fiction writers tend to prefer devoted readers to ardent worshippers. To mark the occasion of Narayan’s centenary year, a range of reissues has recently appeared, introduced by a new generation of authors who see him not as a dated writer of historical consequence but as a timeless writer of aesthetic excellence.

The article brings about R K Narayan’s political sensibility, and gives a very good analysis some bits of the master’s writings.

I found it interesting that R K Narayan had given up all hope of finding a publisher for his first novel. He asked his friend Purna, who was in Oxford then, to throw the manuscript into the river.
However, Purna sent it to Graham Greene. Graham found the manuscript very interesting and shot off a letter of admiration to R K Narayan and at the same time got Hamish Hamilton to publish the first novel.

Rest, as they say, is literary history.
Read the article here.

Alright, another fiasco. The timings seem to have been changed by NDTV.
Anyway, no more updates in future on this program thing. Apologies!

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After the earlier fiasco with my self-publicity stint, here I go at it again.
And this time, the information is credible, ladies and gentlemen.

Catch Dhi on NDTV Profit on the program Youth Unplugged.
For your convenience, we have arranged multiple slots of broadcast. Alright, was kidding about that. Our program might probably be used as fillers between various slots.

However, you have no excuse to miss Dhi giving his grave opinions to the world. For 30 minutes.
Yes, we live in lucky times.

Schedule:

30th December, Saturday , 2:30 pm
30th December Saturday , 2:30 at night (repeat)
2nd January, Tuesday, 6:30 am (repeat )
4th January, Thursday , 6:00pm (repeat)
4th January, Thursday , 2:30 at night (repeat)
6th January , Saturday , 6:00 am (repeat)

Let me use my earlier punch line once again:
Be there or be there.

Quiz time, ladies and gentlemen.

This time the theme is The Mahabharat.

Q1: On the first day of the war, both parties blow their respective conchs to indicate the start of the war. More of a war cry actually. Krishna blows the conch named Panchajanya. Name the conch blown by Arjun.

Q2: The battle of Kurukshetra had two invincible warriors. One was Bhishma. Name the other.

PS: The usual – No Googleing, no copying, no chits allowed.

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Answers appended:
1) Devadatta
2) Satyaki

PS: Judge’s decision is final. However, comments are welcome .

Chilli got the first one right – Full points to you and JK Steel Radials.

Browsing through Catcher in the Rye notes yesterday, I came upon quotes/excerpts from the book at Wikiquotes.
(Spoiler warning: The quotes might reveal the plot and the ending. They also contain profanity)

Here are some excerpts:

“Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.” “Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it.” Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right— I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.

I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was already broken and everything by that time, and I couldn’t do it. It was a very stupid thing to do, I’ll admit, but I hardly didn’t even know I was doing it, and you didn’t know Allie. My hand still hurts me once in a while when it rains and all, and I can’t make a real fist any more— not a tight one, I mean— but outside of that I don’t care much. I mean I’m not going to be a goddam surgeon or a violinist or anything anyway.

The Navy guy and I told each other we were glad to’ve met each other. Which always kills me. I’m always saying “Glad to’ve met you” to somebody I’m not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.

The thing is, most of the time when you’re coming pretty close to doing it with a girl— a girl that isn’t a prostitute or anything, I mean— she keeps telling you to stop. The trouble with me is, I stop. Most guys don’t. I can’t help it. You never know whether they really want you to stop, or whether they’re just scared as hell, or whether they’re just telling you to stop so that if you do go through with it, the blame’ll be on you, not them. Anyway, I keep stopping. The trouble is, I get to feeling sorry for them. I mean most girls are so dumb and all. After you neck them for a while, you can really watch them losing their brains. You take a girl when she really gets passionate, she just hasn’t any brains. I don’t know. They tell me to stop, so I stop.

You could tell he didn’t feel like discussing anything serious with me. That’s the trouble with these intellectual guys. They never want to discuss anything serious unless they feel like it.

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
- Quotation of Wilhelm Stekel written down on a piece of paper by Mr. Antolini for Holden.

D.B. asked me what I thought about all this stuff I just finished telling you about. I didn’t know what the hell to say. If you want to know the truth, I don’t know what I think about it. I’m sorry I told so many people about it. About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about. Even old Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that goddam Maurice. It’s funny. Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

For obvious reasons, I have left out the best quote from the book since that would give away the meaning of the title.

A couple of days ago there was a panel discussion held on the future of world stock exchanges and capital markets.

The panel comprised of representatives from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) and a graduate college in the US.

Apart from the usual talks on future mergers of capital markets, their impact on the world, the possibility of competition between regulatory authorities etc., what interested me the most was the kind of work that the NCDEX has quietly achieved within a short period of time.

The NCDEX was incorporated in 2003 as an online commodity exchange. Farmers now prefer to trade on this exchange rather than sell their produce to the government. The selling rate of wheat at the exchange was around Rs. 1100. Contrast this with the Minimum Support Price (MSP)of Rs. 650 set by the GoI and you get a fair idea about the gains that a farmer achieves.

Infact, last year, the government was unable to meet its target amount of wheat procurement primarily because most of the wheat was traded at this exchange! Currently in India, only about 25% of the price paid by the end-consumer is passed on to the farmer. A staggering 75% is consumed by the distribution channel. In the US, the share of the farmer stands at 60%. Coming back home, Amul has been able to provide its producers with a share of 90% of the consumer’s expenses!

A challenge that NCDEX faces is that the insurance companies are not very willing to provide financial cover to the crops. The reason cited by these companies is that they are not equipped with sufficient data on the weather conditions. The Indian Meteorological Department has weather stations spread district-wise. Now, usually a district is quite large and hence there persist weather differences within a district itself.
To overcome this problem and to rope-in the insurance companies, NCDEX is planning to set-up weather stations at most of the villages where the traded crops are grown.

NCDEX also plans to move into the spot exchange market – However, one problem they could face here is that in India the derivatives market is regulated by the Central Government whereas the spot market is regulated by the state governments.

In addition to setting up weather stations, NCDEX has started setting up warehouses at the transaction sites. This will ensure that the farmer gets to stow his produce while the transactions are completed and also gets cash upfront, unlike the dismal state in the current mandis where farmers have to wait for days before selling their crop at low rates.

It was interesting to know that a commodity exchange was bringing about such impactful changes and helping the Indian farmer get his due rewards.

Website of NCDEX: http://www.ncdex.com

Back from a wonderful weekend at Bangalore. Great fun to meet up with family, the guys, relatives – all the people to whom you truly belong.

Description of my trip to Bangalore shall be written some other time; not quite in the frame to write down tid-bits of an itinerary.

Right now, after a long long time, listening to Pennyroyal tea and my mind is taken back to college days.
The only things that mattered to me then included getting my Sunny repaired, going to Eloor to pick up Kurt Vonnegut books (and other related trash like Bo Fowler!), criticising the world for no reason whatsoever, treating everything with cynicism, making gods of Salinger and Cobain and Gallagher brothers, watching every ball of a cricket test match and following it up with watching the highlights, deciding between bun-puff and idli-vada and all such grave issues.

I’m on my time with everyone
I have very bad posture

Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
Distill the life that’s inside of me
Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
I’m anemic royalty

It suddenly feels as though I am looking back at some other person who had his life busy with such inconsequential matters and had his mind all the time busy with such seemingly insignificant issues. Yet, he was happy, for some strange reason. He indeed was.

Now, its me. A different me. A me to whom Salinger and the likes no longer hold iconic images, cricket is last on my mind, my Sunny has been sold off, Vonnegut comes across as piece of trash. I have other issues, or do I? Bigger question – Am I happy?

I think some years down the lane I shall look back and say that I was happy and the current me shall complain about other issues. I think its important to be happy when you are what you are.

Never know when that moment passes by leaving you thinking you would’ve been happy.

Like I told Chilli the other day, we might be on a raft without oars, but tell you what, we don’t want to do this boating shit anymore. Let’s get back to the land.

For others who didn’t get that, my apologies.

I’m so tired I can’t sleep
I’m anemic royalty
I’m a liar and a thief
I’m anemic royalty
– Nirvana

BV continues to display his awesome ability at writing movie reviews.
Read his review of Casino Royale here.

Excerpts:

With prequels, the challenge is two-fold. One, you need to leave the viewer with an “oh that’s why it’s like this!!” Feeling and two, you need to risk taking the viewer away from the presently comforting “I know these characters” zone into a more primitive zone of characterization, where things are different from the present.

When you lose someone you love, your cup runneth over with emotion and then it empties. I don’t know which one of the two is more bearable. But I ask this. Is one disappointment enough to change a man for life? If one woman did not turn out to be predictable, is it enough to despise womanhood forever; is a breach of trust by one person, enough to not trust anyone anymore?

A fabulous write-up BV!!

Darwin’s theory of evolution, if put naively, can be summarized in the phrase “Survival of the fittest”.

Now, what if the fittest species decides that it doesn’t want to exist?
Would it change the course of evolution?

Time for some self-publicity, ladies and gentlemen.

Catch Dhi Only One on NDTV 24×7 on Thursday 4:30 pm. Program name – Youth Unplugged.
(Yep, still being considered as youth).

And do not worry, I shall be on air for a full 30 minutes.

“Yes”

“No”, said the boy who was wearing corduroy trousers that didn’t fit him. The beedi that he was smoking made him look a lot younger.

“I am confident”, said the boy in rags.

“How do you say that?”, spoke Corduroy.

“I know for a fact that that spot there shall have a star when I die”, Rags mumbled as he pointed his index figure up at the sky.

“And?”

“And that…and that stars govern our fate”

“And?”

“And that star next to my empty spot is my mother”

“Go on”

“The brighter one, there, is father and the one right next to it, glowing dimly is my brother”.

There was a small pause which seemed like a light year as smoke meandered through Corduroy’s mouth up into the seamless sky.

“You do remember seeing your family go up in smoke don’t you? At the factory furnace?”

Another pause. Some more beedi smoke in the air. The sky looked hazily white for a moment until the smoke cleared.

“Yes, and that is why those stars can be seen now. Those stars were not there before the furnace blast”, Rags let a tear roll down and perch upon his artificial smile. A smile that he had learnt to deploy against his inner urge to scream out in sorrow.

“Tough luck pal, it could have been anyone”.

“No, it had to be my parents. My brother. It had to be them”.

“Why?”

A hesitant moment passed by as the siren of the factory rang out its shrill shreik in the background. The 12:00 o’ clock train chugged by and the rails seemed to have livened up temporarily.

“Why? Why do you say it had to be them?”, Corduroy repeated, lighting another beedi.

“I had sinned”, said Rags as the last carriage of the train crossed the visible horizon.

“What did you do dammit?”

“I know it was because of my sin that they died.”

“Care telling me what you did instead of going on like this?”, Corduroy flicked the ash onto the wild grass below. A single blade withered and ended its existence.

“I smoked a beedi for the first time that day”, Rags admitted, with a rouge of shame on his face.

Suddenly there seemed a deafening silence. The rambling of the train could be heard yet again even though it had travelled a few miles by now.

Corduroy tore open the muteness with a raucous laughter.

“Your parents had to die because you smoked your first beedi?”, he blurted amidst seemingly endless chuckles.

“Yes”

“No”

“That is how it is. You commit a sin, your near and dear ones pay for it. Someday, sometime. But they pay for it”.

The laughter died down gradually and the smoke hovered around for a moment in anticipation of further conversation.

“You telling me that this fourth beedi that I have smoked is a sin and my family will pay for it?”

“Yes”

“No”

“Yes ofcourse”

“No ofcourse. You forget that I don’t have a family. No parents, no siblings. Nothing. Everyone dead before I came here”.

“Then maybe your close friends will pay for it. Who is your close friend?”

“You”, Corduroy spoke and burst into laughter yet again.

“Then I have to pay for it. I am glad to know. I want to get back to mom, dad and brother soon. I am grateful to you”, Rags smiled his first genuine smile since a long time.

“Listen, enough of this nonsense”.

“This is not nonsense. Someone has to pay for every sin. Otherwise there will become more of evil than good. That will not be good.”

Corduroy looked at Rags with a little suspicion.

“You okay?”

“It will not be good. The world can’t have more evil than good”, Rags continued talking to himself.

“Alright, alright. Hey, listen. Okay, fine, someone will pay for me smoking my beedis. Now, let’s go home”.

“You remember the furnace don’t you? The smoke?”, Rags stared into the distance and spoke.

“Yes”

“You know, I don’t remember that. I remember only the screams.”

“Listen, please lets go home. Its too late”

“Yes its been late enough. I still hear the screams. In my dreams, or should they be nightmares? No, they are not nightmares. Because in nightmares I don’t get to see my parents and brother. I see them only in a dream right? A dream where they all scream and die.”

Corduroy went up to Rags and held his hand.
Rags brushed it aside and continued looking into the distance. The screams were getting louder. He looked up and the stars seemed to be flickering with more gusto than before.

Corduroy was sweating by now and wasn’t able to get Rags out of his trance-like stance.

“Evil cannot be allowed to be more than good”, Rags chanted on.

“Shut up will you?”, Corduroy slapped Rags across his chicken-pox scarred cheeks.

Rags looked at Corduroy and smiled. The 1 o’ clock train was approaching and the rails were busy once again.

“I will pay for your sins brother. And don’t forget to look at that empty spot. I shall be there soon”, Rags whispered and threw himself onto the rails. The train was just in time.

Corduroy screamed in horror. The beedi fell from his fingers. The train too joined in the mourning with its clangorous bellowing.

After a full 30 seconds, Corduroy looked at the remains of his close friend. A close friend who had to pay.

He looked up at the sky at the empty spot. Nothing. He looked harder.
A faint glow appeared. A star flickered at that very spot. The ones around it suddenly seemed to be glowing brighter. Corduroy fell on his knees and wept.
He wept as the millions of stars in the sky above looked down at him.