Ranjit Kulkarni's Blog, page 5

Mountain Stories: Annapurna Base Camp

There are many reasons why one should consider a high altitude trip to the mountains. Whether it is a small day hike, or a longer trek or a mountaineering expedition depends largely on your interest and fitness. But the reasons remain the same.

Some do it for the thrill and adventure of getting to a place not easily accessible. Others do it as a test of mental and physical endurance and strength. A few others are driven by a sense of accomplishment that reaching the destination often provides. Many want to get closer to nature and absorb the beauty and the solitude.

I was never a trekker when younger. Why someone would pay money and spend time to get to a place where physical discomfort is guaranteed was beyond my understanding then. Even today, I sometimes have doubts.

But I have come around to the conclusion that getting close to the surreal beauty of nature only seen after a particular altitude and meeting people very different from those we see in everyday life are enough compensation for the aches and pains.

In my recent trek to Annapurna Base Camp which I completed in April, my experiences were similar. The astounding beauty of the Annapurna region in Nepal, the mind-boggling views of the mountains up close, and the chance to see Nepali village life and its people were opportunities that made the trek a memorable one.

The trek is a moderate to difficult one – no two ways about it. It is not just about the views and the forests and the people – those are the things one enjoys after taking care of the physical and mental aspects.

Acclimatization, hydration, strength, endurance, preparation, the right gear, enough sleep, good food, rain covers, snow protection – these are all things that need to be taken care of, first. Only then does nature reveal its grace to a body and mind ready for it.

The trek for our group started ahead of Nayapul – from Ghandruk to Kimrong, after a Kathmandu-Pokhara flight and a two hour drive from Pokhara. And incidentally, rain was our partner throughout that afternoon. We were blessed with our first view of the mountains that night at Kimrong Danda, making us wonder what more was in store.

The next day from Kimrong to Sinuwa felt like an unending stairway to heaven and beyond. We took a few breaths at Chhomrong over lunch only to proceed to more steps – up and down – and bridges over green villages on our way to Lower Sinuwa.

Machhapuchhare – the fish tail mountain – became our constant companion on this day and the next, providing us glimpses whenever the sky became clear, displaying itself at various angles, and looking astounding any which way you looked at it. The Annapurna range itself stayed mostly hidden.

The following day from Lower Sinuwa to Deurali via the pretty villages of Bamboo, Dovan and Himalaya, often through forests of rhododendrons and lush valleys crossing rivulets, was the real test of endurance and a lower body workout many times over.

The pleasant mountain views in the morning, followed by a hail storm in the afternoon and then walking over avalanche snow in the evening darkness made me laugh at the illusions of control that we harbour in our naive urban minds.

Our experienced guide, all of 60 years old, often sympathized, sometimes smiled, at our questions of ‘how far?’ and ‘how’s the route?’ with answers that started with ‘Let me say – just a bit’ and ‘It is mostly Nepali flat’ – which meant a terrain of ups and downs.

It was the next day, from Deurali to Annapurna Base Camp via Machhapuchhare Base Camp, that turned out to be the one when the grace of nature showered its blessings.

Walking through a steady ascent accompanied by light snowfall and mist as our companion, we reached Machhapuchhare Base Camp for lunch. We left it soon with sporadic views of mountains in sight, at first, simply because of the snow and mist cover.

It was only an hour later, when the mist cleared, while walking in the middle of snow in all directions that the amphitheater of nature started its show with a constant display of the entire range of mountains after every turn.

When we finally reached Annapurna Base Camp in the late afternoon, it seemed like I was standing on sacred ground surrounded by the mountain Gods. It is tough to escape coming face to face with our own littleness in the face of mighty nature up so close there.

I stood spellbound on snow as the setting rays of the sun soaked us in the stunning views of Macchapucchare, Himachuli, Annapurna South, Annapurna 1 and the entire massif with numerous peaks in whichever direction we looked.

It only got better on the following morning as the sun rose early, shining its light in all its glory on the 360 degree view of the mountains from Annapurna Base Camp. Nature had been kind, we had been very lucky to be showered by its grace. It was time to descend.

As we descended, the ability to neglect our legs as if they belonged to another body, while still observing things we had seen on our way up, in a different (literally brighter) light, turned out to be a skill of paramount importance.

That is when the stories about people I saw started taking root in my mind.

A woman porter taking the stairs seemed to be fighting more than just the load on her back. A lone trekker who asked us for directions seemed lost not just on the trek but in life. A noisy family of middle-aged women and men were sure to face some hilarious situations in their struggle to climb up the stairway to heaven.

A villager farming his land, a porter looking for a better life, a monk searching for peace, a guide missing his family and so many more seemed like starting points for stories from the mountains. Perhaps, they were climbing other mountains of their own.

Apart from the forests and the mountains, these impressions about people stayed with me as we completed the descent back into Pokhara. As we came back to the familiarity of the honking cars and milling crowds of Kathmandu, my body recovered from the soreness but my mind dwelt on the experience of the Annapurna Base Camp trek.

While it is not for everyone, for whoever decides that it is for him or her, it is certain to provide memories for a lifetime.

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Inspirations from Everyday Life

When I first moved into my apartment more than sixteen years ago, the area was pretty much in the wilderness. I always wanted to stay away from the hustle and bustle of city life, yet close to the city, so I had no complaints, but there were no two ways about the fact that the access roads to the apartment were still work in progress.

What that meant was that everything needed a car to get somewhere. That was fine for office commuters but presented a challenge for two categories of people.

First was senior citizens who stayed at home most of the time, but needed an easy way to go where they wanted to go whenever they wanted to. Second was people who provided chores services to residents. Both of them found it difficult to get to our place without surpassing the hurdles of access.

This lasted for around two, or maybe three, years after we occupied the apartment. And in that period, two characters who were frequent service providers to residents were etched in my mind.

The first such character was an auto-driver. Let’s name him Balu.

He was diligent in providing services to senior citizens and students. Temple visits, lunch outings or infrequent market or library visits of senior citizens always found Balu to be the auto driver of choice. Tuition classes, day care pickups or extracurricular sports class pick up and drops for students again found Balu to be the auto driver of choice. He was reliable, punctual and safe.

Most importantly, he was at everyone’s beck and call, just a phone call away at most times.

The second such character was the man who provided clothes ironing services. Let’s name him Srini.

He worked like a machine. He knew the run rate of clothes in every house, and, like clockwork, turned up at perfect intervals to pick up the clothes from the laundry bag at his clients’ apartment. He delivered the ironed clothes within 24 or 48 hours without any mistake. He was the launderer of choice. Reliable, punctual and honest.

Most importantly, you could call him in case of anything urgent, and he would turn up without any complaints.

Both Balu and Srini were characters in everyday life that inspired stories in my mind.

How would Balu be with his own children? Did interacting with children of well-to-do apartment dwellers trigger any ambitions in his mind for his own kids? Would he struggle to meet their demands? How would his kids be? These were some of the questions that I set as starting premises for Balu’s story.

Did Srini have a heart that went beyond ironing clothes, like a machine? What is it that motivated him to work that hard for years on end? Did he have some goals in his life? What if he had developed a soft corner for and some expectations from those he worked for? These were the questions that I set as starting premises for Srini’s story.

These two stories, inspired by real life characters, took the shape of Balu Auto and Iron Man Srini, eventually getting published in my book of motley characters ‘Potpourri’. It did turn out that beyond the inspiration, a large part of their stories were imaginary. But it is equally true that if I had not met the real life characters these stories may not have taken shape.

I thank both of them, and many such real life characters, in my mind, often for providing my stories the fodder and inspiration from everyday life. It is an amazing experience to see them take a life of their own when my pen hits paper with them as the canvas.

***

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Notes from ‘Turning Pro’

I recently read a book titled ‘Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life’s Work’ by Steven Pressfield. It’s the next in the series that started with ‘The War of Art’. Though I would rate it a notch lower than ‘The War of Art’, it is, nevertheless, a wonderful, inspiring book for artists. It is largely about what constitutes ‘Turning Pro’, how it is mostly in the mind (and then leads to a practice), and what happens once one decides to turn pro.

Here are some lines from the book that spoke to me. Excerpts below:

Turning pro is free, but it���s not easy. You don���t need to take a course or buy a product. All you have to do
is change your mind

When we turn pro, we give up a life with which we may have become extremely comfortable.

What we get when we turn pro is, we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect.

The shadow life is the life of the amateur. In the shadow life we pursue false objects and act upon inverted ambitions.

We can never free ourselves from habits. The human being is a creature of habit. But we can replace bad habits with good ones. We can trade in the habits of the amateur and the addict for the practice of the professional and the committed artist or entrepreneur.

When you turn pro, your life gets very simple. The Zen monk, the artist, the entrepreneur often lead lives so plain they���re practically invisible.

Turning pro is an act of self-abnegation. Not Self with a capital-S, but little-s self. Ego. Distraction. Displacement. Addiction.

The pain of being human is that we���re all angels imprisoned in vessels of flesh.

If the upper realm is, as Plato suggested, the sphere of perfect love, truth, justice, and beauty, then the artist seeks to call down the magic of this world and to create, by dint of labor and luck, the closest-to sublime simulacra of those qualities that he or she can. This pursuit produces, for the artist, peace of mind.

The amateur fears that if he turns pro and lives out his calling, he will have to live up to who he really is and what he is truly capable of.

The amateur allows his worth and identity to be defined by others. The amateur craves third-party validation.

The amateur is tyrannized by his imagined conception of what is expected of him.

When we truly understand that the tribe doesn���t give a damn, we���re free. There is no tribe, and there never was. Our lives are entirely up to us.

Sometimes it���s easier to be a professional in a shadow career than it is to turn pro in our real calling.

When we turn pro, we will be compelled to make painful choices. There will be people who in the past had been colleagues and associates, even friends, whom we will no longer be able to spend time with if our intention is to grow and to evolve. We will have to choose between the life we want for our future and the life we have left behind.

Each day, the professional understands, he will wake up facing the same demons, the same Resistance, the same self-sabotage, the same tendencies to shadow activities and amateurism that he has always faced. The difference is that now he will not yield to those temptations.

The essence of epiphanies is the stripping away of self delusion.

Why is shame good? Because shame can produce the final element we need to change our lives: will.

The professional knows when he has fallen short of his own standards.

Never train your horse to exhaustion. Leave him wanting more.

The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it. He knows that when the Muse sees his butt in the chair, she will deliver.

The amateur is an acolyte, a groupie. The professional may seek instruction or wisdom from one who is further along in mastery than he, but he does so without surrendering his self sovereignty.

It seems counterintuitive, but it���s true: in order to achieve ���flow,��� magic, ���the zone,��� we start by being common and ordinary and workmanlike.

When we do the work for itself alone, our pursuit of a career (or a living or fame or wealth or notoriety) turns into something else, something loftier and nobler, which we may never even have thought about or aspired to at the beginning. It turns into a practice.

A practice implies engagement in a ritual. A practice may be defined as the dedicated, daily exercise of commitment, will, and focused intention aimed, on one level, at the achievement of mastery in a field but, on a loftier level, intended to produce a communion with a power greater than ourselves���call it whatever you like: God, mind, soul, Self, the Muse, the superconscious.

When we convene day upon day in the same space at the same time, a powerful energy builds up around us. This is the energy of our intention, of our dedication, of our commitment.

The space of the practice is sacred. It belongs to the goddess. We take our shoes off before we enter. We press our palms together and we bow.

Once we turn pro, we���re like sharks who have tasted blood, or renunciants who have glimpsed the face of God. For us, there is no finish line.

That place that we write from (or paint from or compose from or innovate from) is far deeper than our petty personal egos. That place is beyond intellect.

The best pages I���ve ever written are pages I can���t remember writing.

Our role on tough-nut days is to maintain our composure and keep chipping away. We���re pros. We���re not amateurs. We have patience. We can handle adversity. Tomorrow the defense will give us more, and tomorrow we���ll take it.

The professional knows that, in the course of her pursuit, she will inevitably experience moments of terror, even panic. She knows she can���t choke that panic back or wish it away. It���s there, and it���s for real.

Our job, as souls on this mortal journey, is to shift the seat of our identity from the lower realm to the upper, from the ego to the Self. Art (or, more exactly, the struggle to produce art) teaches us that.

When you and I struggle against Resistance (or seek to love or endure or give or sacrifice), we are engaged in a contest not only on the material, mental, and emotional planes, but on the spiritual as well.

The clash is epic and internal, between the ego and the Self, and the stakes are our lives.

***

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Stories from Meghalaya

My wife and I went on a short trip to Meghalaya in March. It is a very beautiful state and abounds in natural beauty and a very unique way of life.

It was carved out as a state out of two districts of Assam. Even as you cross over from Assam into Meghalaya on the way from Guwahati to Shillong, the stark difference in everything – from nature, cleanliness, people, language, food – is visible right away.

But apart from the tourist spots and their beauty which you can find on Google, I found a few very interesting stories that I carried back from Meghalaya. Many of them were told to us by our driver, some of them by guides, some by my own research when I was at the museum in Shillong. So here are a few of them.

NohKalikai

The most shocking story was of the legend of NohKalikai falls which is in Sohra (Cherrapunji is called Sohra by the locals). It translates as ‘Jump of Ka Likai’ – because a woman called Ka Likai from a village nearby gave up her life by jumping into it. The reason for that is the story which our driver narrated to us with full drama.

It turns out that Ka Likai had been married to a man she loved who dies leaving her with a young baby girl. Another man who professes love to her a couple of years later becomes her second husband though Ka Likai herself is hesitant. He turns out to be a good-for-nothing and a drunkard and the young lady has to work to keep the fires burning.

The second husband meanwhile can’t tolerate living off his wife, and turns his anger, one fine day, on the child. In a shocking turn of events, when he beats her out of drunken anger, the child dies. In a state panic, to get rid of the body, believe it or not, he actually cooks her into a curry, and after realizing what he has done, he runs away.

When Ka Likai returns, she doesn’t find anyone. She is hungry and, thinking they must be nearby, she has a sumptuous meal, unwittingly, of the curry she finds. To her utter shock, she later realizes what she has eaten on finding a few little fingers of the child. Unable to bear the agony, she is tormented, and jumps off the falls, and hence the name – NohKalikai.

Kwai

The second story was about the custom of offering Betel Nut (called Kwai in Khasi). Very many years back apparently there were two men – one of them a rich one and the other a poor one – in a village. They were very close, but after marriage, the poor man shifted to the village of his wife. It is a custom still followed – our driver being an example – that if the bride is the youngest daughter of her parents, her husband has to move to her house, and they are supposed to take care of the bride’s parents – a nice one, I thought.

But coming back to the story. Whenever the poor man came back to visit his village, he spent hours chatting at the rich man’s house who treated him to extravagant meals. Gossip spread in his wife’s village that he had a rich friend who always lavished him with fine presents. Finger pointing started that he was maintained by the rich man, but he never hosted his wealthy friend.

Forced by the bad mouthing, the poor man called his rich friend. But he was ashamed when he and his wife had no food at home and didn’t have anything to offer to the rich friend. Unable to bear the ensuing gossip, the poor couple killed themselves.

The rich man was pained when he realized this, and since then, he offered the betelnut with the leaf and lime to anyone, regardless of status, who visited him. The betelnut represents the rich man, the betel leaf the poor man, and the lime his wife.

Hence started the Kwai friendship custom in Khasi villages – a leveler of kinds! Not as gory as the NohKalikai story, but this story too involved some deaths! The surprising thing, though, is that despite so much betelnut being chewed, there are no red stains anywhere in Meghalaya. I am not sure what is the story behind the cleanliness.

Observations

Apart from these stories, a few quick observations I noted during our trip.

The first is about Tagore and Shillong. He loved Shillong, apparently, and visited it thrice for long periods of time. Some of his famous literary works were written while he was there or inspired from Shillong. So did Swami Vivekananda and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, but the records of their visits were lost in the pages of history.

The second is about a local Khasi fruit called SohPhie. It is a yellow green fruit that is seasonal and part of many Khasi menus in the form of jams. Our local host presented us with a bottle of SohPhie wine.

The third is about the tribes of Meghalaya. Khasi, Jaintia and Garo are the main ones, and their culture, folklore, clothes, food are quite different. Every tribe has its unique culture, folklore and food. You get a glimpse of that in the museum.

And all of them are different from the tribes of Arunachal, Nagaland and other Northeastern states. So, in reality, each of the seven sister states are more like far-off cousins than sisters. The nuances can only be understood by getting closer.

Endnote

Apart from the sightseeing around Sohra, Dawki and Shillong, we also met a lot of interesting characters in this Meghalaya trip. Our driver to start with, and then, the boatman and caretaker in Dawki, the young guide in the sacred forest were the ones of note. And I found the settings of haunted falls, limestone caves and lush forests that we chanced upon to be ripe for their stories to be told.

I am certain some of these characters and settings are going to find a way into a story in the future. Whether they do or not, time will tell. But in the meantime, I would highly recommend a visit to pristine, serene Meghalaya – till it stays that way!

***

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Stories by Rabindranath Tagore on Netflix: Review

Last year, over a few weeks, I watched this series on Netflix – Stories by Rabindranath Tagore. It is an adaptation of some of the best short stories by Tagore spread over 26 episodes and directed by Anurag Basu. It captures the ethos of Bengal during that time in its characters, settings and narration. The aesthetics of the episodes takes you back in time when these wonderful stories were written.

It is very well-made, more so because these are stories not easy to adapt from the written word to the spoken. Tagore’s stories are not action-packed thrillers or fantasies where a lot happens, but a slow reflection of characters, a voice that needs to be felt.

I had read somewhere that when you read a book, many movies plays in your head, while when you watch a movie, only one story is shown to you – that’s why we often say that the book was better than the movie.

But in this case, I was glad that the best short stories by Tagore have moved from the page to the screen without losing a lot of their original lilting effect.

Here I list the selected ones that I liked the most.

Atithi: I started with this, though this is episode 4. It is a very interesting adaptation of a nomadic, curious, exploring character Tara who runs away from home, and his given shelter by a zamindar. His daughter starts dreaming about a life with Tara, and how it all unfolds is very nicely shown – no heroes, no villains in this one.

Kabuliwala: How can this story not be there? Despite the high expectations from this popular Tagore tale, I must say it is a very well-made sensitive episode of a story spread over many years. The relation between the Kabuliwala and the narrator’s daughter, and how it is all fleeting for the man who returns on the day of her marriage is depicted so as to leave a sympathetic tear in your eye.

The Broken Nest: This was a story I hadn’t read before. The tenuous (or strong) relationship floating between a workaholic husband who dreams of running a newspaper, his lonely wife who loves music, and the younger brother of the husband who is a musician (and called by the husband himself to give company to his wife) is tense. The emotional crisis that unfolds is something to watch.

Samapti: This was another story of a strong woman character that is characteristic of many Tagore tales. In most stories while the antagonist for a strong woman is society or a man, in this, it is her mother-in-law. A man rejects his mother’s choice and marries a tomboyish, self-driven girl. This story tells what she faces in the form of her mother-in-law. An age-old concept, well told.

Tyaag: Stories about the struggle between caste and romantic love are not new, but this one adapted from Tagore’s complex tale of a struggle faced by a man who marries a low caste woman thinking she is not, and the girl who feels obligated to tell him the truth has many layers to it. Many characters such as the fathers of both and others add to the realistic nature. We keep wondering who won.

Two Sisters: This story (which is more like a novella) must have been truly ahead of its times. It is about a man and two women – he is married to the elder sister who is the motherly type, and her younger sister who is the romantic type. This basic conflict is explored, quite explicitly, in this story with a turn of events and many related characters. Eventually, it is the strong woman characters that you remember.

Mrinal Ki Chitthi: This is a brilliant story about a strong woman who is a writer, and trapped in a marriage to a man with backward views. A tale of how she uses her writing skills to bring about change is fascinating. This is not an easy story to adapt as it is so much about the written word. But it has been adapted so well, that it is perhaps one of the top 3.

Chokher Bali: Not a short story, but actually a novel and so takes three episodes (the first 3 which I watched last). The complex story of the young widow Binodini and her strong free-spirited life in an environment of patriarchy, child marriage and suppression is well depicted. This is the story of Binodini, her hidden desires and twisted maneuvers, her relations with Mahendra (her muse before marriage) and Bihari, and how it all unfolds. A novel ahead of its times, but the ethos has been well captured. Great watch, only if you don’t compare it to other adaptations of this story.

There are other stories too, which I have not included, but these were the ones I liked the most. You may like some of the others.

So overall, this is a great series. I am simply glad that short stories of Tagore have got an audience in the age of OTT. If you get a chance and want to explore the literature of Tagore on screen, whether you have read it in book format or not, watch this series.

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Notes from ‘The War of Art’ – 2

I recently read a book titled ‘The War of Art’ by Steven Pressfield. It argues that the writers’ biggest enemy is Resistance, and advocates ways to identify and deal with it. Here are my notes – part 2 from the book:

Now consider the amateur: the aspiring painter, the wannabe playwright. How does he pursue his calling? One, he doesn���t show up every day. Two, he doesn���t show up no matter what. Three, he doesn���t stay on the job all day. He is not committed over the long haul; the stakes for him are illusory and fake. He does not get money. And he overidentifies with his art. He does not have a sense of humor about failure.

The professional, though he accepts money, does his work out of love.

The professional has learned, however, that too much love can be a bad thing.

The more you love your art/calling/enterprise, the more important its accomplishment is to the evolution of your soul, the more you will fear it and the more Resistance you will experience facing it. The payoff of playing-the-game-for-money is not the money (which you may never see anyway, even after you turn pro). The payoff is that playing the game for money produces the proper professional attitude.

Technically, the professional takes money. Technically, the pro plays for pay. But in the end, he does it for love.

The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work.

The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn���t talk about it. She does her work.

The professional knows that Resistance is like a telemarketer; if you so much as say hello, you���re finished. The pro doesn���t even pick up the phone. He stays at work.

The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come.

The professional identifies with her consciousness and her will, not with the matter that her consciousness and will manipulate to serve her art.

The professional cannot take rejection personally because to do so reinforces Resistance. Editors are not the enemy; critics are not the enemy. Resistance is the enemy. The battle is inside our own heads.

A professional schools herself to stand apart from her performance, even as she gives herself to it heart and soul.

The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her.

The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page.

Resistance has no strength of its own; its power derives entirely from our fear of it.

The pro keeps coming on. He beats Resistance at its own game by being even more resolute and even more implacable than it is.

As Resistance works to keep us from becoming who we were born to be, equal and opposite powers are counterpoised against it. These are our allies and angels.

Because when we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.

When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.

The last thing I do before I sit down to work is say my prayer to the Muse. I say it out loud, in absolute earnest. Only then do I get down to business.

Artists have invoked the Muse since time immemorial. There is great wisdom to this. There is magic to effacing our human arrogance and humbly entreating help from a source we cannot see, hear, touch, or smell.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation)there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.

What does it tell us about the architecture of our psyches that, without our exerting effort or even thinking about it, some voice in our head pipes up to counsel us (and counsel us wisely) on how to do our work and live our lives? Whose voice is it?

Clearly some intelligence is at work, independent of our conscious mind and yet in alliance with it, processing our material for us and alongside us.

This is why artists are modest. They know they���re not doing the work; they���re just taking dictation.

I think angels make their home in the Self, while Resistance has its seat in the Ego. The fight is between the two.

The Self is our deepest being. The Self is united to God. The Ego hates the Self because when we seat our consciousness in the Self, we put the ego out of business.

We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we���re stuck with it. Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

***

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The Long and Short of AI: Jigneshbhai and Swami

“I am fed up with Raichand,” Swami told us the other day over coffee. Jigneshbhai and I ignored it because that was nothing new. But what he said after that caught our attention.

“So, I decided to get on to LinkedIn and find a new job,” he said. We looked up from our coffee mugs, because it had been a long time since Swami had changed his job.

And it has been even longer since he had done something on LinkedIn. A boss like Raichand had finally provided the trigger.

“It has changed a lot. Every time I put something into my profile, I get a prompt underneath which says ‘Rewrite with AI'”, he said. “Whether it is the summary of my profile or anything related to past experience or whatever, I can write it with AI,” he sounded excited.

Jigneshbhai looked up and remarked, “So does it write what you want to say?”

“Yeah, it does. But only longer. In many more words than I would have. Everything becomes more verbose,” he said and continued. “So I used this feature to update everything, and this is how my profile now looks,” Swami added, and gave us a printout he was carrying.

It had 4 or 5 pages, enlisting all his achievements over the two decades that he had spent working for Raichand and others before him.

“Wow, it is quite long,” Jigneshbhai remarked.

“This is just the profile. When you try to post something, you must see what the AI rewrite can do. It can churn out pages and pages of stuff,” Swami said. He was clearly excited about his new-found discoveries, but I could see much in the form of chagrin on our wise friend Jigneshbhai’s face.

“Does anybody read all this?” he asked. “Profiles and posts and what not. So much stuff generated by AI?”

Swami’s face lit up as if he was almost waiting for this question.

“Well, they also have a AI Summarizer. It takes a profile or whatever you feed it, and generates a summary in 250 words,” Swami reported, in all earnestness. “That makes it quite short to read.”

And while I was absorbing what was happening, Jigneshbhai broke into a laugh. “So, an AI generator to create a verbose profile and an AI summarizer to cut it down?” he remarked, looking quite amused. Swami hadn’t seen the funny side of it in all his enthusiasm.

But the wealthy old man in the sprawling bungalow who had been listening to our talk all this while made him see it. Swami and I broke into a smile when he walked towards us and said, “Looks like that is the long and short of AI !!!”

***

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Mistakes I made when I published my first book

When you are in a rush to publish your first book, in some ways, it is a good thing. The good thing is that you finish what you start. Most authors find it difficult to finish what they started – especially when it comes to their first book.

So I was very happy when I finished the first draft of my first book. And in no time, I had finished the editing and it was ready for publishing. I learnt how to publish the book – both in e-book and print format – and in no time, I was ready to press publish.

And I did. From starting the first draft to publish in four months. I was happy with it. But now when I look back, I realise that I made a lot of mistakes that I should not have made when I published my first book.

Here I try to list a few.

Being in a hurry to publish: Make haste slowly – a famous wise proverb says, and I should have paid heed to it – a book is not ready when you think it is. When I look back at ‘The Good, The Bad and The Silly‘, I often feel that many parts of it are fairly bad. I should have paid more attention to the plot, how the story flows in a seamless manner, and how the characters evolve in the process.

Not thrashing out the writing first: The most important thing to pay attention to in your first book is the writing itself. The book is not finished without thrashing out the loopholes in the story, the plot and the characters themselves. I should have jotted it down before writing the episodes. No wonder a lot of readers enjoyed the chapters, but couldn’t quite figure out what the story was about.

Not doing a Manuscript Review: They are worth the price. A manuscript review will tell you which characters and plot areas you need to flesh out better. It will tell you if the flow is holding the reader. These are skills that can be learnt – it is the craft of writing, not the style and voice – which is your own. I did get my manuscript reviewed, but I did it after the novel was published.

Not hiring an Editor: The editor helps, based on what you hire him or her for. Even if you pay by the word for line or copy editing, you will be surprised by the mistakes that a good editor will point out. Not just the adverbs and passive voice but even if a sentence should be deleted altogether. These are things that your own second round editing may not catch, and spellcheck and grammar check in Word won’t.

Instructing the Cover Designer: I made the mistake of telling the cover designer what exactly I wanted in the cover. It might seem like a good thing, but, for a first book, I realized that it is better to leave the designer alone – at least for the first design. Spending time on optimizing a badly made cover (based on my own instructions) is not a smart thing to do.

Not Adhering to Formats:��The e-book (Kindle) and Print formats (based on size) are different. I should have had more eye for detail to fix the differences required. The reader can easily see even one mistake. It is like a wicketkeeper dropping a catch – everyone remembers. It comes back again to being in a hurry. There is no rush.

Expecting Too Much: Not everyone is interested in reading your book. They are interested in the fact that you wrote a book, but beyond that, readers have to discover a book. I made the mistake of expecting too much from my first book, even though I was not writing it for money. Just the sheer act and effort in publishing a book creates those expectations. This is almost an unavoidable mistake for a first-time author.

Underestimating Marketing: It is not about some social media posts or emails to family and friends. Nor is it about doing some book launch interviews or press releases. Marketing is about finding the right audience for your writing. I had no idea how to do it, and even today, I haven’t learnt it. This mistake for a first-time author can be forgiven, I guess.

So, what would I recommend if you end up doing these mistakes anyway?

Well, learn quickly is the least one can do. The good part is I tried to implement some of these from my second book. A review, an editor, a cover designer and formats are easy to follow. Thrashing out the writing and understanding marketing might take a long time. They are always work in progress. But keeping them in mind are useful.

I still remember going to an experienced writer after my first book was published, and excitedly, telling him that my first book was published. I expected that he will ask for a (signed) copy and provide some encouragement on how well it has come out.

He did neither. In what I now understand to be stemming from experience and maturity, all he said was, “Congratulations!! Now go write the next one!!”

***

 

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The Hitchhiker���s Guide to the Galaxy – 42 Funny Lines

In Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” the number 42 is the answer to the “Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything,” calculated by the supercomputer Deep Thought after 7.5 million years. Unfortunately, the question itself is never revealed. It is a parody on the futility of asking such questions.

It is one of my all-time favourite books of comical farce and wisdom. And while it has many unforgettable lines, I compiled a small bunch of funny lines, 42 of them, reproduced below:

���This planet has���or rather had���a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.���

���Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.���

“���Did I do anything wrong today,��� he said, ���or has the world always been like this and I’ve been too wrapped up in myself to notice?������

���Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?���

���He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.���

���I’d far rather be happy than right any day.���

���Here, for whatever reason, is the world. And here it stays. With me on it.���

���Reality is frequently inaccurate.���

���If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.���

���The answer to the great question…of Life, the Universe and Everything…is…forty-two.���

���The argument goes something like this: ���I refuse to prove that I exist,��� says God, ���for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.������

���Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.���

���All through my life I’ve had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was.���

���Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.���

���Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.���

���So once you do know what the question actually is, you’ll know what the answer means.���

���For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.���

���We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!���

���One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious.���

���Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.���

���What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”
“Ask a glass of water!���

“Make it totally clear that this gun has a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly for them.”

���The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. ���

���I don���t know what I���m looking for… I think it might be because if I knew I wouldn���t be able to look for them.���

���Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity���distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless.���

������I don’t want to die now!��� he yelled. ���I’ve still got a headache! I don’t want to go to heaven with a headache, I’d be all cross and wouldn’t enjoy it!������

���Very deep… You should send that in to the Reader’s Digest. They’ve got a page for people like you.���

���Listen, three eyes,��� he said, ���don���t you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.���

���Exactly!” said Deep Thought. “So once you do know what the question actually is, you’ll know what the answer means.���

���My capacity for happiness,” he added, “you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first���

���I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good.���

���Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.���

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”

“There is a moment in every dawn when light floats, there is the possibility of magic. Creation holds its breath.”

���He was staring at the instruments with the air of one who is trying to convert Fahrenheit to centigrade in his head while his house is burning down.���

���We are now cruising at a level of two to the power of twenty-five thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway.���

“It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.”

���The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.���

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

“Many were increasingly of the opinion that they���d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

���So long, and thanks for all the fish.���

***

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