Cultural difference

Up sluggard, and waste not life;

in the grave will be sleeping enough.

Benjamin Franklin

Who will argue with the above? However, Hindus burn their dead and believe that the soul is immortal. So the idea of sleep in the coffin is alien to Hindus.

The above quote about the peace of death reminded me of a famous 'shloka' by the Sanskrit poet Bhartruhari. He uses exaggeration to make the point of indignities of poverty being worse than death.

The shloka has a poor man requesting a dead body in a burning ground for the dead to get up and exchange their places. Allow me to lie down and enjoy your peace for just a little while as poverty has robbed me of it, he says. The dead person listens, ponders and says that poverty is a fate worse than death and so it does not respond; continues to lie down as before.

In praise of routine, repetitive work

 Deadlines to be met, reports to be submitted, meetings to be attended, presentations made, the team must be hustled, targets met - yes, corporate life is full of pressure. Other fields too, have their own compulsions.

Then how about?

1. cooking
2. drawing and painting
3. exercising
4. deep breathing
5. meditating
6. writing a diary
7. keeping a journal
8. embroidery
9. knitting
10. sewing
11. wiping and putting away utensils in their place
12. folding and ironing clothes
13. dusting furniture
14. hanging washed clothes for drying
15. changing curtains and bedspreads

I could go on. This is non-glamorous but essential work which actually keeps our surroundings and our mind clear. Only the clear mind can ruminate, connect the dots and offer new insights, new ideas. Otherwise it quickly becomes jaded and falls into a rut. It works but is devoid of joy and satisfaction.

So never underestimate routine work. It is good.

The reading list

I had posted an entry with the same title a year ago. (October 5, 2022, label: Learning) It was about an old lady who painstakingly went through all the books in a reading list of 150 books her school teacher had handed over to all the students who were passing out of school. The teacher knew that most of them would not be able to pursue higher studies. However, she wanted them to keep in touch with learning and books and so the list.

I had vowed to prepare a list myself, a modest one of 25 books. One year has elapsed and the list is pretty ordinary. However, I have gone through all of them and can vouch for them.

Because Google search has made access easy, I have not given complete bibliographical references, particularly in Fiction, for what may be called classics. I guess it will not be difficult to get the books.

Most of my readers are mature and I do know they occasionally want to escape our dreary world. We also long to understand our world better. I hope the reading list will help in both these cases.

Instead of lamenting about the death of the reading culture, giving specific suggestions is helpful.

So, do give the list a once over.

The reading list

Non-fiction

1.    The complete Indian housekeeper and cook, Flora A. Steel, Grace Gardiner, 1888, 1904

2.    Social action and the labouring poor: an experience, Primila Lewis, 1991

3.    Women’s work, the first 20,000 years, women, cloth and society in early times, Elizabeth Wayland Barber, 1994

4.    Give us credit, Alex M. Counts, 1996

5.    Social research methods, qualitative and quantitative approaches, W. Lawrence Newman, 2000

6.    Truth, love and a little malice, an autobiography, Khushwant Singh, 2001

7.    The laws of lifetime growth, Dan Sullivan, 2007, 2016

8.     Outliers, the story of success, Malcolm Gladwell, 2008

9.     Deep work, Cal Newport, 2016

10.  Failing to succeed, the story of India’s first e-commerce company,   K. Vaitheeswaran, 2017,2019

 

 

 

Fiction

1.    The ladies’ delight (Au bonheur des dames), Emile Zola, 1883, 2001

2.    Keep the aspidistra flying, George Orwell, 1936, 2000

3.    These old shades, Georgette Heyer, 1926, 2004

4.    A town like Alice, Nevil Shute, 1950

5.    The Priestley companion, extracts from the writings of J.B. Priestley selected by himself, 1951

6.    True grit, Charles Portis, 1968

7.    Changing places, David Lodge, 2011

8.    Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

9.    Jane Eyre, Emily Bronte

10. Complete short stories, Anton Chekhov

11. Room, Emma Donoghue, 2010

12. The glass palace, Amitav Ghosh, 2000

13. Gone with the wind, Margaret Mitchell

14. All creatures great and small, James Herriot

15. China court, Rumer Godden, 2013

 

 

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Drift

 An organizational malady.

A beginning is made with a bang and there is a lot of enthusiasm and spirit to do something well. Time passes and drift sets in. In case of business organizations, the market is supposed to take care of drift.

What about non-market organizations?

Right in front of my house stands the large campus of an army school which imparts training to soldiers and officers. A commandant looks after its affairs. The trainees are generally kept very busy. Their day begins at 5 a.m. and ends at 6.15 p.m. with a breakfast and lunch break in between. The trainees are divided into groups of about 30 persons and 1 master, wearing red socks is in charge of  1 group. When the school is full, at least 5 or 6 groups can be seen exercising, playing and doing acrobatics of different types at any time during the day. According to my nephew who was in the air force, these masters are very good people.

For the last fortnight, I have noticed only 2 masters around. They just stand there and leave their charges free. The trainees do not know what to do with themselves. Instead of the normal super active selves, they cut a very sorry figure just standing around. Some of them start exercising, others join or do not. It looks very pathetic.

What could have happened?  Is the current commandant  not competent? Have some masters been transferred and only 2 left back? Have they been assigned office duty?

I will never know. But I am saddened by this drift.

It was the same in the college in which I taught. Because exams were pretty easy and because teaching was not very stirring, students stopped attending. Then teachers stopped teaching. Instead of taking both to task, the administrators were busy plotting their own career moves. Result: empty classrooms and a dismal ambience.

Of course, it is dangerous to leave 16 to 19 year- old's, boys and girls, together like this. All types of mischief was rife on the campus but teachers and administrators turned a blind eye and things drifted more.

In the army school, I hope the drift will be temporary. In the college, drift was permanent, I am afraid. The college stands but it makes no contribution to anything.

It is the duty of organizational leaders to ensure that drift does not set in.

Reading list

I recently read an article by a 70-year old lady in The Reader's Digest, Asia (October 1, 2022) Her circumstances of birth and later, marriage, prevented her from pursuing higher education but she had an innate strong desire for learning and for bettering herself. She describes the day in school when her teacher distributed copies of a long reading list of 150 books. The teacher knew that most of her students would not be in a position to go to a university. She wanted them to continue their learning and so painstakingly, over a long period of time, she had compiled the list.

The writer of the article took up the list whenever she could and get - from local libraries, old bookshops and later outright purchase - the books in it. She began at the beginning and is nearly through the list now. After her domestic responsibilities were reduced and after she retired, she could finish 3 or 4 books from the list in a year. She also read them thoroughly, even when she could not understand them fully. For example, she described Das Kapital by Karl Marx as a very boring, rambling book.

The writer is proud of her own work. It was her higher learning, she says. The reading allowed her to get into different situations, perspectives, aspects of life, reasoning, laying bare of emotions etc. etc. and to enrich her understanding and her personality. She is grateful to her teacher and is even more proud of her.

The article got me thinking. I am also a teacher and hundreds of students have passed through my hands. Well, not exactly because there was always a huge gap between students and teachers in a college. Still, I can think of so many who would profit today from a dip into literature. Most of them would be settled in their careers and would have time on hand. At least some would have begun to grapple with thorny issues of meaning of life, our place in the world, purpose of existence, what to do after job, family and money etc. etc. Perhaps my small reading list would help some of them.

I have made a small list of 25 books, 15 fiction, 10 non-fiction. All of them were with me at different periods in my life and I vouch for them. They are an eclectic mix.

I am refining the list right now and soon, I will put it up.

Shocking incident

 I am used to hearing other teachers talking about their students and how well they have done in life etc.

My experience today is just the opposite. Maharashtra Times of 3 November 2021 has reported that a student of mine with her husband was apprehended by the police at Delhi international airport; they were trying to fly to Sri Lanka to escape. The couple was absconding ever since investors had lodged complaints against their investment company. The amount mentioned is Rs. 3.37 crore rupees.

The amount is not much by today's standards. I have become uneasy because of my student's involvement. She was a bubbly girl, full of beans. She resembled the actress Tanuja and had the same carefree manner. The junior college did not come up to her expectations but in the senior college, she had a nice group and things clicked. She could take part in all extracurricular activities and was popular. While doing M.Com. she did a business on the side of selling her notes to other students.

Then she married her friend since childhood. The hitch was that he was from a different religion and though her mother relented, her father did not. So she eloped but looked happy. Then I lost contact with her but I would see her photos occasionally on page 3. She looked glamorous and different. I had a feeling that she had become different.

And now this!

I am disturbed because a charming student of mine has ruined her life.

My experience with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing

Having done a fair amount of reading on the life of memsahibs in India in the 19th and 20th century, I wrote on it, organizing my information in a cohesive manner. The manuscript was submitted to a Marathi publisher. Their editors called me over and suggested some changes which I carried out and they told me that they would go through it again. I took it as a provisional acceptance.

Then Corona struck and Marathi publishing came to a standstill. My hopes were dashed as the publishers were totally non-committal. 

As a way out of the inactivity and boredom, I started writing a novel on the life of memsahibs. As usual I made a rapid start and then things became slow. Had to push myself and somehow completed the project. It had a hasty ending.

Amazon sent a message about their publishing competition in India and suggested I could enter my new book. Why not, I said to myself and entered Empire in the competition. I had to publish it on Amazon first. The e-book was not a problem but the print version was. Only the e-book was enough for entry.

It did not make the grade. 

Then came another message about advertising the novel on Amazon. I demurred. They offered to run a short campaign for me but I was not interested.

Then one workshop about how advertising works on Amazon was organised online by Bryan Cohen, an American. I enrolled because I wanted to know the details.

I created some five ad copies and ran them while doing the workshop. The online ads are basically about choosing keywords and finding an appropriate category for your work. I settled on historical biographical fiction. Did not choose women's fiction. Had to generate some 100 keywords during the course. Then came the writing of the ad copy. I enjoyed learning all this. Unfortunately, my ads generated some clicks but not a single sale. During the course, it became clear that authors were expected to keep writing - whole series of books or independent books. One person in the community even declared that he wrote and sold low content books!

I was dismayed at the lack of response but then realized that the novel was a misfit. Everything on Amazon is governed by quantitative metrics. Quality did not come into it.

Things became clear after this realization. Also understood then why two libraries whom I had requested to look at my novel gave it a short shrift.

So Amazon KDP has no truck with quality. Indeed there is no editing or curating of the content. I think I will soon get Empire unpublished from Amazon.