Ranjit Kulkarni's Blog, page 21

This is Marketing – Notes 2

Notes and Excerpts from ‘This is Marketing’ by Seth Godin.

Our calling is to make a difference. A chance to make things better for those we seek to serve.

Writing books or creation of anything else for that matter whether video courses, training, cartoons, Youtube videos, podcasts, is a commodity. You can’t claim to be anywhere close to the best at it or even better than anyone else at it.

The alternative is to find and build and earn your story, the arc of the change you seek to produce. This is a generative posture, one based on possibility, not scarcity.

Your best customers become your new salespeople.

For the independent creator of intellectual property (a singer, perhaps, or a writer), it turns out that a thousand true fans might be sufficient to live a better-than-decent life.

A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce.

The challenge for most people who seek to make an impact isn’t winning over the mass market. It’s the micro market. They bend themselves into a pretzel trying to please the anonymous masses before they have fifty or one hundred people who would miss them if they were gone.

The smallest viable market makes sense because it maximizes your chances of changing a culture. The core of your market, enriched and connected by the change you seek to make, organically shares the word with the next layer of the market. And so on. This is people like us.

Focus all our energy on this group. Ignore everyone else. Instead, focus on building and living a story that will resonate with the culture we are seeking to change.

Enrollment is what you need to earn permission to engage.

Advertising is unearned media. It’s bought and paid for. And the people you seek to reach know it. They’re suspicious. They’re inundated. They’re exhausted.

There are two key things to keep in mind about pricing: Marketing changes your pricing. Pricing changes your marketing.

Better to apologize for the price once than to have to excuse a hundred small slights again and again. Price is a signal.

The rational thing is to believe that we’re more likely to require trust before we engage in risky transactions.

Real permission works like this: If you stop showing up, people are concerned. They ask where you went.

Every publisher, every media company, every author of ideas needs to own a permission asset, the privilege of contacting people without a middleman.

If it sounds like you need humility and patience to do permission marketing, that’s because it does. That’s why so few companies do it properly. The best shortcut, in this case, is no shortcut at all.

How many people would reach out and wonder (or complain) if you didn’t send out that next email blast? That’s a metric worth measuring and increasing.

If permission is at the heart of your work, earn it and keep it. Communicate only with those who choose to hear from you. The simplest definition of permission is the people who would miss you if you didn’t reach out.

It’s worth noting that whether something is remarkable isn’t up to you, the creator. You can do your best, but the final decision is up to your user, not you. If they remark on it, then it’s remarkable. If they remark on it, the word spreads.

As people work their way through the funnel—from stranger to friend, friend to customer, customer to loyal customer—the status of their trust changes.

These huge marketplaces (Amazon, Netflix, iTunes, etc.) depend on the misguided hopes and dreams of individuals way out on the long tail. Separately, each one struggles. Taken together, it’s a good business.

The best marketers are farmers, not hunters. Plant, tend, plow, fertilize, weed, repeat. Let someone else race around after shiny objects.

The method isn’t to go out and find an agent. The method is to do work so impossibly magical that agents and producers come looking for you.

If creating is the point, if writing and painting and building are so fun, why do we even care if we’re found, recognized, published, broadcast, or otherwise commercialized? Marketing is the act of making change happen. Making is insufficient. You haven’t made an impact until you’ve changed someone.

***

 

Notes from ‘Deep Work’ – Set 3

A few months back I read a book titled “Deep Work” by Cal Newport. I found that a number of points raised and solutions offered in the book resonated with me. It was a very well-written book and I compiled some useful snippets from it into a bunch of notes. The first and second set of these snippets are here and here.

Here is the third and final set of those notes which relate largely to quitting social media for deep work:

The first point is that we increasingly recognize that these tools fragment our time and reduce our ability to concentrate. This reality no longer generates much debate; we all feel it.

Willpower is limited, and therefore the more enticing tools you have pulling at your attention, the harder it’ll be to maintain focus on something important.

The Any-Benefit Approach to Network Tool Selection: You’re justified in using a network tool if you can identify any possible benefit to its use, or anything you might possibly miss out on if you don’t use it. The problem with this approach, of course, is that it ignores all the negatives that come along with the tools in question.

The Craftsman Approach to Tool Selection: Identify the core factors that determine success and happiness in your professional and personal life. Adopt a tool only if its positive impacts on these factors substantially outweigh its negative impacts.

Notice that this craftsman approach to tool selection stands in opposition to the any-benefit approach. Whereas the any-benefit mind-set identifies any potential positive impact as justification for using a tool, the craftsman variant requires that these positive impacts affect factors at the core of what’s important to you and that they outweigh the negatives.

In a time when so many knowledge workers—and especially those in creative fields—are still trapped in the any-benefit mind-set, it’s refreshing to see a more mature approach to sorting through such services.

The first step of this strategy is to identify the main high-level goals in both your professional and your personal life.

Keep using this tool only if you concluded that it has substantial positive impacts and that these outweigh the negative impacts.

What about a less famous writer? In this case, book marketing might play a more primary role in his or her goals. But when forced to identify the two or three most important activities supporting this goal, it’s unlikely that the type of lightweight one-on-one contact enabled by Twitter would make the list.

The question once again is not whether Twitter offers some benefits, but instead whether it offers enough benefits to offset its drag on your time and attention (two resources that are especially valuable to a writer).

Our strategy, therefore, would return a perhaps surprising but clear conclusion: Of course Facebook offers benefits to your social life, but none are important enough to what really matters to you in this area to justify giving it access to your time and attention.

By taking the time consumed by low-impact activities—like finding old friends on Facebook—and reinvesting in high-impact activities—like taking a good friend out to lunch—you end up more successful in your goal. To abandon a network tool using this logic, therefore, is not to miss out on its potential small benefits, but is instead to get more out of the activities you already know to yield large benefits.

Don’t formally deactivate these services, and (this is important) don’t mention online that you’ll be signing off: Just stop using them, cold turkey. If someone reaches out to you by other means and asks why your activity on a particular service has fallen off, you can explain, but don’t go out of your way to tell people.

After thirty days of this self-imposed network isolation, ask yourself the following two questions about each of the services you temporarily quit:
Would the last thirty days have been notably better if I had been able to use this service? Did people care that I wasn’t using this service? If your answer is “no” to both questions, quit the service permanently. If your answer was a clear “yes,” then return to using the service. If your answers are qualified or ambiguous, it’s up to you whether you return to the service, though I would encourage you to lean toward quitting. (You can always rejoin later.)

By spending a month without these services, you can replace your fear that you might miss out—on events, on conversations, on shared cultural experience—with a dose of reality. For most people this reality will confirm something that seems obvious only once you’ve done the hard work of freeing yourself from the marketing messages surrounding these tools: They’re not really all that important in your life.

By dropping off these services without notice you can test the reality of your status as a content producer. For most people and most services, the news might be sobering—no one outside your closest friends and family will likely even notice you’ve signed off.

These services aren’t necessarily, as advertised, the lifeblood of our modern connected world. They’re just products, developed by private companies, funded lavishly, marketed carefully, and designed ultimately to capture then sell your personal information and attention to advertisers.

They can be fun, but in the scheme of your life and what you want to accomplish, they’re a lightweight whimsy, one unimportant distraction among many threatening to derail you from something deeper. Or maybe social media tools are at the core of your existence. You won’t know either way until you sample life without them.

In other words, this strategy suggests that when it comes to your relaxation, don’t default to whatever catches your attention at the moment, but instead dedicate some advance thinking to the question of how you want to spend your “day within a day.”

If you haven’t given yourself something to do in a given moment, they’ll always beckon as an appealing option. If you instead fill this free time with something of more quality, their grip on your attention will loosen.

If you give your mind something meaningful to do throughout all your waking hours, you’ll end the day more fulfilled, and begin the next one more relaxed, than if you instead allow your mind to bathe for hours in semiconscious and unstructured Web surfing.

The value of deep work vastly outweighs the value of shallow, but this doesn’t mean that you must quixotically pursue a schedule in which all of your time is invested in depth.

Without structure, it’s easy to allow your time to devolve into the shallow—e-mail, social media, Web surfing. This type of shallow behavior, though satisfying in the moment, is not conducive to creativity.

A commitment to deep work is not a moral stance and it’s not a philosophical statement—it is instead a pragmatic recognition that the ability to concentrate is a skill that gets valuable things done.

Deep work is way more powerful than most people understand.

To leave the distracted masses to join the focused few, I’m arguing, is a transformative experience.

***

Timeless Malgudi

A few months back I read a book which was an anthology of R K Narayan’s enduring stories and novellas. Titled ‘The Very Best of R. K. Narayan Timless Malgudi: Timeless Malgudi’ it turned out to be true to its name. It contains lots of stories about Swami and Malgudi, and then there was the famous Guide and Talkative Man. The amazing part of Narayan’s fiction is the characters. One can’t help but feel for them, and wonder what made them what they are.

The story of Raju is about how a normal man becomes a Godman in pursuit of love and money and fame, and partly by chance. The interesting part about Guide is that the Raju you read in the book is very different than the Raju (Dev Anand) you see on screen in the movie. In fact, it was surprising (and somewhat painful) to know in another piece of non-fiction in the same collection titled ‘The Misguided Guide’  (which Narayan wrote after the release of the movie) that he wasn’t happy with the portrayal of Raju and, in general, the adaptation of Guide on screen. In fact, it would be fair to say he was angry, even livid. The Raju on screen and the setup shown have no traces of Malgudi, which you realize after reading the book. What a pity, especially when I actually liked the movie!

Of course, there are other stories which are best read than discussed. Overall, this was a collection that took its time to finish, but was well worth the effort. Quite a collector’s item by the master.

Here is my short review I posted on Amazon:

A Malgudi anthology

Splendid collection of Narayan’s stories including the fantastic Guide and The Talkative Man. Some more Swami excerpts would have been great but the nonfiction pieces were a surprise. Overall, a collector’s item.

 

A Rainy Day: Short Story

On a wet, gloomy, rainy morning, when the alarm rang, Supriya snoozed it again. She pulled the blanket over her ears. A few more snoozes followed. Her eyes sensed a streak of mild sunlight peeping into her bedroom from the window curtains. Though the sun was not seen, that small ray of light on the dark morning was enough for Supriya to open her eyes. The thundering clouds and the sound of rain water pitter-pattering on her window sill did not let her sleep.

She saw her husband snoring next to her and envied him. She glanced at the watch to check the time again. The doorbell would ring soon. It did as expected.

Supriya ambled along her living room and opened the door. It was her maidservant. She picked up the wet newspaper lying on the water puddle outside the door and walked inside.

“Where is the milk?” Supriya asked her.

“Madam, it spilled on the floor,” the maid replied pointing outside.

Supriya walked across the door and saw the mess outside. The milk boy had placed the milk packet on the floor. There was a hole in the packet. The milk had spilled over on the floor from that leak.

Supriya sensed the blood in her veins boiling. She curled her lips and shook her head. How many times do I have to tell this milk boy to be careful when he delivers the milk? She said in her mind.

She picked up the milk packet. She held it up in her hand against the light to check it. From one corner of the packet, the milk was leaking out. Half the milk in the packet was gone. The rain water and the spilled milk had formed a small puddle in the corridor outside the door of her flat.

Supriya walked straight to the drawer of her living room unit and got her mobile. She searched for the phone number of Manjunath, the newspaper and milk boy. She called that number in a hurried frenzy. The phone rang but there was no response. She gritted her teeth.

She clicked a picture of the mess outside her door on her mobile. Then she clicked a photograph of the torn leaky milk packet. Before she stepped out in a hurry to search for Manjunath, she pulled the rain jacket. Thank God she had picked it up in the mall last weekend, she thought.

When she came back dejected on not finding the milk boy, her husband was sitting on the sofa.

“Where did you go, so early, in the rain?” he asked.

“Look at this,” she yelled pointing to the milk-water puddle.

“Again, today?” her husband asked. “Does he throw the packets or what?”

“I have no idea, but this is getting too much,” she howled.

He looked at her without a word and walked across the table to pick up the wet newspaper.

“Today, even that was on the floor,” Supriya shrieked. “I have clicked the photos. He is not picking up the phone. I am going to send them to him. And post them to our society group. Let everyone know how careless he is. There is a limit to everything.”

“Hmm.. should I go get milk from the grocery shop?” he asked, trying to change the subject.

“I went there. It’s closed. It is raining,” Supriya retorted. “No tea today. You can have it black if you want. I have a breakfast meeting and need to leave early,” she said, and stepped into the bath.

***

Manjunath stopped his bicycle in front of the gate of the apartment. He got off to deliver milk and newspaper to the seven houses in it. He had completed his deliveries to the ten flats in the building next to it.

The plastic that covered his dripping hands, head and chest was not enough to protect him from the rain. The rain water had seeped inside on to his body, leaving him drenched. As soon as he got off, he rechecked the milk packets on the bicycle stand to ensure they were safe. He had covered them with the other plastic sheet, and he felt relieved that they were fine.

He untangled the rope that tied up the bag of those packets to the bicycle stand. Then he picked the bag putting it on his shoulder. He kept a handkerchief on his drenched head and walked towards the building. Once he was inside the lobby, he checked his phone while waiting for the lift. He had the habit of starting from the top floor and walking down, completing the milk deliveries on the way.

He had received twenty messages on his phone, eight of them from “Supriya Madam A-101.” When he saw the messages, a sultry smile appeared on his wet lips.

“I forgot to ring the bell today.” He crunched his mouth and slammed his palm on his forehead. Some of his customers wanted him to ring the bell, and some of them thought it disturbed them. A-101 was ambivalent. But today, Manjunath thought he should have rung the doorbell.

“It is the cat at it again,” he thought to himself. He had seen the cat today while stepping out of that building. She had curled up on the edge of the ground floor lobby seeking some warmth in the cold rainy weather. It had struck him that once he stepped outside the building, she might step inside.

He called Supriya’s number after seeing the eight messages and the two missed calls.

“Madam, it is because of the cat,” he reported.

“Which cat? You keep talking about it, but I never see it,” Supriya yelled into the phone.

The cat was a cunning creature, Manjunath knew. It had its share of milk and sneaked out before anyone found out. On a couple of occasions, Manjunath had thought of catching her but failed.

“Madam, there is a stray cat on the ground floor,” he explained.

“I don’t know that. If you know there is a cat, you should ring the bell so that I pick up the packets. Do you know how much we suffer when there is no milk? This is not the first time,” she scolded.

Manjunath listened without any retort. He had no choice. “Sorry, Madam. Next time I will ring the bell,” he said.

“But this time, I am going to cut your money. And I have told everyone in the building to do that. This is the third time this month you were careless. Unless you are more careful, Manjunath, you will not get paid. Keep that in mind,” she said, and hung up.

Manjunath saw the remaining messages after that on his phone. Four more flats in the building had the same complaint. The cat was on a roll today, he thought to himself. He had to do something about it, he felt, but he didn’t know what.

He shrugged his shoulders. He glanced into the curtain of rain outside. He continued completing the rest of the deliveries. He didn’t feel angry. He felt amused. A bit helpless.

He dawdled back to his bicycle in the rain. He calculated the losses he was going to suffer this month. He covered his head with the plastic sheet and got on to his bicycle.

The raincoat will have to wait.

***

This story was first published in Twist & Twain on April 23, 2022. You may also read it here.

Life’s Amazing Secrets: Notes 1

Here are my notes from Life’s Amazing Secrets: How to Find Balance and Purpose in Your Life by Gaur Gopal Das.

WHEEL 1: PERSONAL LIFE

I have found that we as a people have got busier over time. We tend to exclude parts of our lives which are not directly related to hard work and accumulating wealth. The construct of the modern world is such that we have less time to press pause, and appreciate beauty.

Contemplation is by far one of the best methods to develop gratitude. Spending time with our own mind in silence, without any gadgets to stimulate us and contemplating on who has helped us internalizes our gratitude.

Spirituality is based on the premise that we live in this world, but we are not from it. Many of our problems lie in not understanding our fundamental identity: we are not human beings having spiritual experiences; we are spiritual beings having human experiences. It’s impossible to realize this principle theoretically. We can attend hundreds of lectures and read volumes of books; but this is inadequate without us committing to a spiritual practice, or sadhana as it is known in Sanskrit.

Connecting above ourselves means re-establishing our relationship with God, or something higher than ourselves.

The deeper effect is that meditation carries us far. It completely transforms our character, develops the best of qualities within us and allows us to experience self-realization. Through meditation we become the best versions of ourselves. But this takes time and is often imperceptible.

Notes from ‘The Practice’- Set 3

A few months back I read a book titled ‘The Practice’ by Seth Godin. I loved it a lot and made some notes from it. They are some profound lines from the book which spoke to me. The first and second set of these lines are here and here.

Here is the third set:

***

Any idea withheld is an idea taken away. It’s selfish to hold back when there’s a chance you have something to offer.

Worrying is the quest for a guarantee, all so we can find the confidence to press on. It’s an endless search for a promise: the outcome will be worth the effort we put into the process.

The time we spend worrying is actually time we’re spending trying to control something that is out of our control. Time invested in something that is within our control is called work. That’s where our most productive focus lies.

Instead of seeking reassurance and buttressing it with worry, we could make the choice to go back to work instead.

The source is simple: It’s the self. It’s us when we get out of our way.

The practice is choice plus skill plus attitude. We can learn it and we can do it again. We don’t ship the work because we’re creative. We’re creative because we ship the work.

Talent is something we’re born with: it’s in our DNA, a magical alignment of gifts. But skill? Skill is earned. It’s learned and practiced and hard-won.

The practice simply asks you to do it more than once, to do it often enough that it becomes your practice.

It’s possible (and admirable, and even heroic) to be an amateur. The amateur serves only herself. If there are bystanders, that’s fine, but as an amateur your work is only for you. A privilege, a chance to find joy in creation. And you may choose to make the leap to be a professional, to have a practice. To show up when the muse isn’t there, to show up if you don’t feel like it. This manifesto is for you. But please, avoid the path of becoming a hack. Sure, work can be better than no work, but the posture of giving up your standards to get that work can quickly become toxic.

A professional is not simply a happy amateur who got paid.

Ship creative work. On a schedule. Without attachment and without reassurance.

The person who has paid for your scarce time and scarce output is more likely to value it, to share it, and to take it seriously.

What change do you seek to make? Why bother to speak up or take an action if you’re not seeking to change someone or something?

Who are you trying to change? What change are you trying to make? How will you know if it worked?

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth establishing why we’re doing it.

We’re not simply doing this work for ourselves. We’re doing it to help someone else, to make a change happen. That’s why the “who” is so important.

We seek to create a change for the people we serve. The most effective way to do that is to do it on purpose.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t a moral choice, it’s simply a practical one. If you’re committing to the process, you’ll need to choose. Choose who it’s for and what it’s for. And the more different the person you serve is from you, the more empathy you’ll need to create the change you seek to make.

First, find ten. Ten people who care enough about your work to enroll in the journey and then to bring others along.

What do they believe? What do they want? Who do they trust? What’s their narrative? What will they tell their friends? The more concise and focused you are at this stage, the more likely it is that you’re actually ready to make change happen.

The trap is in the generic. In the cloudy persona, the undetermined person, the vague generality.

People who like things like this will love what I’m doing.

Once we know who it’s for, it’s easier to accept that we have the ability and responsibility to bring positive change to that person. Not to all people, not to create something that is beyond criticism, but for this person, this set of beliefs, this tribe.

The process of intentional action requires us to set aside what we need so that we can focus on what the work needs.

There’s a tension, the gap between what the work wants and what the person paying for it wants. Dancing in that gap is the work of creating our art.

The process of shipping creative work demands that we truly hear and see the dreams and desires of those we seek to serve.

To cause change to happen, we have to stop making things for ourselves and trust the process that enables us to make things for other people.

On one hand, we have to ignore the outcome, the box office numbers, and the famous critics, because if we obsess about them, we will break our process, lose our momentum and eventually be sapped of our will to be creative. On the other hand, there actually is a difference between good work and not-good work. There’s a point to our effort, and the change we seek to make involves empathy for others, not just the solipsism of doing whatever we feel like. That paradox is at the heart of our practice: we must dance with it, not pretend it doesn’t exist.

We can return again and again to this simple narrative: This is a practice. It has a purpose. I desire to create change. The change is for someone specific. How can I do it better? Can I persist long enough to do it again? Repeat.

There is nothing authentic about the next thing you’re going to say or do or write. It’s simply a calculated effort to engage with someone else, to contribute, or to cause a result.

Your audience doesn’t want your authentic voice. They want your consistent voice.

Not sameness. Not repetition. Simply work that rhymes. That sounds like you. We make a promise and we keep it.

What we seek out is someone who sees us and consistently keeps their promises to bring us the magic we were hoping for. Someone who has committed to rhyming with what they did yesterday.

We can only deliver what our audience needs by being consistent, by creating our inauthentic, intentional, crafted art in a way that delivers an authentic experience to our audiences as they consume it.

Determine who it’s for. Learn what they believe, what they fear, and what they want. Be prepared to describe the change you seek to make. At least to yourself. Care enough to commit to making that change. Ship work that resonates with the people it’s for. Once you know whom it’s for and what it’s for, watch and learn to determine whether your intervention succeeded. Repeat.

***

Business for Authors: Review

A while back I read a book titled “Business for Authors” by Joanna Penn. Though I never looked at writing as a means to a livelihood (25 years of corporate life perhaps allowed me to keep it as a hobby at best, or at worst, a vocation), for those who have the gumption to start writing early in their life, writing can end up being the primary means of livelihood. It is tough for writers to wear both these hats – one using the right brain and the other using the left brain. It is almost like two people in one – not easy at all. But what writer Joanna Penn does truly well is to appreciate the difficulty but still find a way to help authors. The book contains a lot of advice on mindset required to operate writing like a business, as well as a number of tactics and methods to actually implement it.

Here is my short review of the book that I posted on Amazon.

Nice guide

It’s a nice detailed guide for new writer’s wanting to make a living from their writing. Covers various aspects of the journey with a good practical toolkit list. Useful to read in detail when you are starting out and as a reference to check back as a reminder later.

This is Marketing – Notes 1

I recently read a book titled ‘This is Marketing’ by Seth Godin. As per my habit, I marked out some notes which I found useful while I was reading. I have collated some of the ones which I found worth sharing and put them together below. Take a read!

***

It doesn’t make any sense to make a key and then run around looking for a lock to open.

Your emergency is not a license to steal my attention. Your insecurity is not a permit to hustle me or my friends.

Time to get off the social media merry- go- round that goes faster and faster but never gets anywhere.

Persistent, consistent, and frequent stories, delivered to an aligned audience, will earn attention, trust, and action.

If you can bring someone belonging, connection, peace of mind, status, or one of the other most desired emotions, you’ve done something worthwhile.

Once you’re clear on “who it’s for,” then doors begin to open for you.

Choose the people you serve, choose your future.

The smallest viable market is the focus that, ironically and delightfully, leads to your growth.

The goal of the smallest viable audience is to find people who will understand you and will fall in love with where you hope to take them.

“It’s not for you” shows the ability to respect someone enough that you’re not going to waste their time, pander to them, or insist that they change their beliefs.

Everything that we purchase—every investment, every trinket, every experience—is a bargain. That’s why we bought it. Because it was worth more than what we paid for it. Otherwise, we wouldn’t buy it.

You can’t be perfect in the eyes of an early adopter; the best you can do is be interesting.

This is the lock and the key. You’re not running around grabbing every conceivable lock to try out your key. Instead, you’re finding people (the lock), and since you are curious about their dreams and desires, you will create a key just for them, one they’ll happily trade attention for.

Find your lock and the keys will be obvious to you and them.

***

The Begging Girl: Short Story

At the red signal, with 76 seconds left for green, he felt someone touch his feet inside the auto rickshaw. He turned to look at his left. A girl in tattered rags, running nose and dishevelled hair stood there with a small board in her hand. It surprised him that she spoke in English. He neglected her and continued fiddling with his phone. He turned his attention to the red signal. 68 seconds still left.

“Sir, give me 50 Rupees, for school fees. Sir. give me thirty rupees, give me anything, Sir,” she said.

He turned his sight back to her. While he read the writing on the board, she continued her begging. “Give me thirty rupees, Sir. Vivekananda School, Sir. Give me anything, Sir,” she pleaded.

The board in her hand had a handwritten note. Looking at his gaze fixed there, she pushed it closer.

“I am da 9 years old. My name is da Shabnam. I study at Vivekananda School in da three standard. I need money to pay da school fee. Please help whatever. Please help da anything.”

Below this notice there were two scribbles. Vijaya 100/-, Murugan 250/- and some initials ahead of them. Then he noticed a scribble over the 250/- in front of Murugan, and 150/- next to it.

He wondered if any of these were real. He looked at the girl’s face. It filled him with mercy. But he questioned if this was a set up. Can never be sure. But giving away something won’t be that bad. The auto rickshaw moved ahead in anticipation of green. It relieved him that he didn’t have to decide anything. He didn’t feel guilty that he hadn’t given her anything. But it stopped at the turn.

He felt a small hand touch his shoes again. The girl turned up again, this time on the right.

“Sir, give me 20 rupees.. anything, give me 1 rupee also, 5 rupees,” she continued pleading.

She peeped inside the rickshaw. He saw her face clearer this time. The hair had a small pleat. An old green ribbon. One of the cheeks was redder than the other. Her eyes were dark. She continued with her begging. She stole a glance of the red signal outside in front of the auto rickshaw. 22 seconds.

Her look evoked mercy in him again. He decided that this time before the auto rickshaw moves, he should give her something. He removed and opened his wallet. He saw that it had many 500-rupee notes. That was out of question, he decided. The other section of his wallet had the smaller notes. A 200, which he ruled out again. Who knows if those Vijaya and Murugan were real? A 100? That was too much, he reckoned. If she was another of those beggars, who gives a beggar a 100 rupee note?

“Sir, give me 10 rupees.. anything.. give me one rupee,” she said again, this time with a sense of urgency. She peeped out to see the red signal. 9 seconds.

At last, he removed a 10 rupee note from his wallet. Her face brightened up. He saw it light up. And then he took another 10 rupee note, and then another. And another.

He handed her the four notes. The signal countdown hit 2 seconds. The signal turned green.

The auto rickshaw started. He moved ahead. The girl ran away and disappeared from his sight.

“No one gives a begging girl 40 rupees just like that,” he smiled. He felt good about his act.

“No one gives a begging girl 40 rupees just like that,” she smiled. She felt good about her act too.

***

This story was first published in Active Muse in the Vasant (Spring) 2022 collection. You may also read it here.

The Practice: Book Review

For writers and all kinds of professional or hobby artists, I highly recommend the book “The Practice” by Seth Godin. I read it almost a year back and it has still stayed with me. I have taken notes from the book and refer to them off and on when I need inspiration. You will find those notes posted on this blog as well.

Here is my review of the book posted on Amazon:;

Inspiring and eye-opening reading

For a writer, this book is a great source of inspiration and method to build a practice. It helped me think about writing as a service to an audience, with the purpose of bringing about some change. It helped me bring more discipline into my art by focusing on process over outcome. The sections on intent were very useful to think about art as a generous service for a defined audience for professional writers. Of course, I would have loved more specific examples on how to determine who it’s for and what it’s for. Seth’s style of coaching artists is similar to his style he has used in the past for small business marketing. It works well to help build a practice of your art.

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