Boring party survival 101

Bring in some cheer at a lacklustre get-together with the help of your smartphone

 

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It’s that time of the year again—when long-lost aunts, bosses you can’t stand for more than 5 minutes in a day, and colleagues whose names you don’t remember invite you to parties you cannot always refuse to attend. So you dress up and head out for evenings that are full of forced festive cheer. Instead of skulking in a corner and morosely nursing a drink, here’s how you can convert your phone into a one-stop entertainment hub and perhaps scrape through the dull dos. And no, our entertainment means are not restricted to watching a movie, checking notifications or playing a game on a smartphone.

Break the ice

It’s easier to slip into the virtual world in a place where you are a stranger or snoop around other people’s lives on social networks. Instead, try something a bit harder—like starting a conversation with someone new. Take banter cues from Conversation Shaker (iOS only) which offers interesting topics based on different situations. Shake the phone to see the next conversation starter. If your style is witty, head on to Hypotheticals, an iPhone app with a huge collection of funny conversation starters.

Conversation Shaker and Hypotheticals are available for free on iTunes.

Gaze at the stars

Not able to come up with clever quips? Get people to look at the night sky instead. Head out into the open to see all the constellations you have heard of (and some you haven’t) with Google Sky Map (www.google.com/mobile/skymap). Sky Map turns your Android-device into a window to the night sky. All you need to do is launch the app and point it to the sky. The app reflects the night accurately in terms of stars, constellations, planets, meteor showers and more. You can zoom in to the Sky Map, turn on the night mode so your eyes don’t need to adjust and even “time travel” by seeing how the same sky looked in another time and date. The perfect way to happily spend time without saying a word.

Google Sky Map (www.google.com/mobile/skymap), available for free on Google Play.

Meet a stranger

There are others out there in the party, equally socially-challenged, bored and looking for some company. The Locals’ button in MeetMe, a proximity-based chat app and social network, uses your location through GPS to tell you of people in the same area as you. Start chatting and you might just hit it off. If you don’t find anyone in your party on the app, try Twoo, yet another app which helps you meet new people using your GPS. Play a game, hangout in the virtual world and you might just want to meet in the real one. Or choose to keep it anonymous with WhosHere, which allows you to chat with people nearby without revealing your phone number, email or instant messaging (IM) address.

MeetMe and Twoo are available for free on iTunes and Google Play. You can also visitwww.meetme.com and www.twoo.com. WhosHere is available for free on iTunes and Google Play.

Swap faces

A good laugh can turn a boring party into a fun one in seconds. Click a picture of the people in front of you and swap their faces in the photo. Face Swap automatically detects faces and makes it easy for you to switch, rotate, and adjust the heads on other bodies. If you prefer replacing faces with zombie cartoons, do it with Trollolol, which automatically detects faces in pictures and swaps them with troll and zombie faces. Share the images with the new friends you make.

Face Swap is available for Rs.110 on Google Play and Amazon, and for Rs.55 on iTunes. Trollolol is available for free on iTunes and Google Play.

Have some fun with drinks

If the party is so boring that there’s no other option than to give in and get drunk, why not drink in style? Ask the bartender for the list of spirits available and then choose the most exotic cocktail name for him to make. Take help from Mixology Drink & Cocktail Recipes (www.mixologyapp.com),which helps you browse through more than 7,900 cocktails, martinis, shooters, jello shots, hot drinks and punches. There’s a Random Drinks tab if you want to explore drinks and recipes and a Liquor Cabinet tab that lets you enter all the liquor you have and then gives you a recipe accordingly. Or choose to get drunk in spy style with The Covert Cocktail(www.spymixology.com), which catalogues…

 

Read the complete article on Live Mint website

How to fortify your stomach

In this season of partying and eating out, the digestive system can go for a toss. Take precautions like avoiding salads or having an early dinner before heading out

 

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Our stomach might be able to bear partying once a week but an every night affair plays havoc with it. “Eating rich food that too at odd hours is not good for anyone,” says Rupali Datta, nutritionist at Fortis Hospital, Vasant Kunj, Delhi. Add to that excessive consumption of alcohol and before you know it, you are stricken with flatulence, nausea and that feeling of wanting to throw up. So does that mean you ignore all invites to parties this season? Not really.

“Moderation is the key. If your limit, for example, is two glasses of beer, then stick to that, even if it’s free,” says Datta. Moreover, if you are partying everyday, give your system a break by having an early dinner at home before you head to the do.

Once at the party, avoid raw food, including salads, and all milk-based products as they spoil easily. “Caterers during the party season buy in bulk, so the ingredients might not be fresh,” says S.P. Misra, professor, department of gastroenterology, Moti Lal Nehru Medical College, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, adding: “Uncooked food items have pre-formed toxins that can cause infections and lead to food poisoning, gastroenteritis and loose motions.”

During the day, go on a diet of liquid and semi-liquid foods. “Liquids not only give your stomach a break, they also help in dissolving fats allowing substances to pass through more easily,” says Datta. Keep away from caffeine which dehydrates the body and rehydrate your body with lukewarm water, fruit juice, lemon water, herbal tea and soups. Here are some other ways to prepare your stomach for the festive indulgence.

Preen on prebiotics

Prebiotics, the non-digestible food in your intestine which helps probiotic bacteria thrive, help in preventing food poisoning and stomach aches, according to the study “Probiotics, Prebiotics, and Synbiotics: Gut and Beyond” by US-based biotechnology company Kibow Biotech Inc., and published in July in the journal Gastroenterology Research and Practice . The research revealed that prebiotics are effective in preventing not only gut-based disorders like IBD (inflammatory bowel disease), digestion and traveller’s diarrhoea but also in maintaining general health. Help the little invisible bacteria friends of yours with a healthy dose of onions, garlic, leeks, legumes, lentils, bananas or asparagus, all of which contain prebiotics.

Sip on red wine

Who said all alcohol is bad for the stomach? A cup (272ml) of red wine daily can improve the bacteria composition in the gut, lower your blood pressure and reduce levels of a protein associated with inflammation. This surprising result was from a study “Influence of Red Wine Polyphenols and Ethanol on the Gut Microbiota Ecology and Biochemical Biomarkers”, published in the May edition of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In the study, the subjects were divided into three groups—one group drank a cup of wine, one had no alcohol and one group had gin. Though even gin was found to be good for gut flora, it was wine which was the most effective. The study suggests drinking a cupof red wine a day to improve digestive health.

Do yoga

Fifteen minutes of morning yoga can strengthen your stomach, says Sanjib Kumar Patra, assistant professor, department of yoga and life sciences, at Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana (S-VYASA), Bangalore. He suggests a combination of 5 minutes of Surya Namaskar and 10 minutes of Pavanmuktasana. “Surya Namaskar is like a general tonic for your health which regulates the endocrine functions of the body and Pavanmuktasana, which in literal translation means ‘release of the winds’, helps empty your intestine of flatulence that you develop due to a disruptive eating routine,” Patra says. After partying, he suggests a day of eating only fruits to eliminate accumulated toxins and relax your stomach.

Wash your hands

A habit as simple as thoroughly washing your hands with soap before eating and after using the toilet can reduce diarrhoeal infections by up to 42%, according to a study carried out by researchers from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Queen Mary, University of London. Published in October, the study also revealed that most people didn’t wash their hands properly. Of the 272 participants the researchers interviewed, only 39% washed their hands before eating. Besides washing your hands, also ensure that your nails are scrubbed clean.

Spoon up triphala

A spoonful of triphala powder—an ayurvedic concoction of three herbs: amalaki, bibhitaki andharitaki —every day increases the body’s immunity and makes it difficult for you to fall ill. In the research for the study “Significant Increase in Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes and Natural Killer Cells by Triphala: A Clinical Phase I Study”, published by researchers from Thailand in the October edition of the journal Complementary and Alternative Medicine , a daily dose of 1,050mg of Triphala was given to healthy volunteers….

Read the complete article on the Mint website.

Beyond Instagram

Looking for image-editing apps to share your photos along with your tweets? Skim through our list.

Twitter and Instagram might have started off as a match made in heaven, but over the last couple of months, signs of a break up have been showing. First, Twitter deactivated the ability to transfer your Twitter friends’ list to Instagram, and this month, Instagram removed the ability to post images directly into your Twitter feed, forcing you to visit the Instagram site to see images.
At the same time, Twitter also added Instagram-style image filters to its iPhone and Android apps, and it doesn’t seem like the two networks are going to see eye to eye again anytime soon. But if you don’t want to use the official Twitter app, there are still plenty of alternatives with image editing and timeline image-sharing built in. We list some of our favourites.
Pixlr Express
Free
One of the smoothest edit apps in the market, Pixlr Express offers you capability to minutely edit your photos in a simple, clean and easy-touch layout. It has four levels of editing. Adjustment can sharpen, whiten, remove red eye, touch up, focus, blur, crop, rotate and autofix. In Effect you can choose vintage, creative or default effects. Overlay adds masks to your photograph and Border adds various styles of borders.
Shareability: Pixlr supports Twitter, Facebook and some other photo-sharing networks, and has a feature that lets you share large, medium or small versions of the picture, depending on whether you want a fast upload or a high-detail picture online.
What we like: It’s simple, clean and has an easy-to-manoeuvre layout.
Get it: Pixlr Express is available on Google Play, iTunes, and web
Aviary Photo Editor
Free
One of the most popular photo editors on Android, Aviary Photo Editor comes loaded with simple features like auto enhance to beautify your photographs with a single tap. Other features include enhance, effects, stickers, orientation and crop. You can edit colour brightness, warmth, contrast, saturation as well as draw and add stickers on to the image.
The Aviary Photo Editor is made by the same company which also created the image-editing filters for the official Twitter app.
Shareability: The app automatically picks up social networking apps on your phone to share with. You need to choose one by one to share as there is no share-all option.
What we like: The layout is simple and changes made to the photos are fast. The editor gives you a high-resolution output and you can customize your tools.
Get it: Aviary Photo Editor is available for free on iTunes, Google Play and Windows Phone. Effects packs such as Grunge and Nostalgia cost Rs.53.72 per pack (each pack comes with six filters).
Decim8
Rs.55
If you are tired of photographs that look pretty, opt for Decim8, an editing app which lets you systematically destroy the photographs you have taken. The app applies filters which make your photos look glitchy on purpose. When you apply a filter through Decim8, it goes into the image file and corrupts the data resulting in hi-resolution messy images.
Shareability: Direct upload to Flickr, Instagram, Twitter, and Postagram.
What we like: You can save combinations of your own favourite effects and use them on more photographs. And the fact that the app comes with a warning sign: “This app is capable of completely destroying an image. If this doesn’t appeal to you, there are lots of apps out there to provide all the ‘safe’ effects you could ever want.”
Get it: Decim8 is available on iTunes. A desktop version will launch in 2013.
Snapseed
Free
A popular editing app for professionals on iPhone, Snapseed was recently bought over by Google and made available on Google Play free of cost. Earlier this year, it was designated the Best Mobile Photo App of 2012 by the Technical Image Press Association (Tipa). The app which is meant as an editing tool for professional or advanced amateur photographers, comes loaded with different enhancement options for cropping, straightening, adjusting focus and fine tuning hues by adjusting white balance, saturation, contrast and more. You can even choose to use Selective Adjust and make changes to a part of the photograph (like removing shadows on people’s faces) and add on filters and borders for a finishing touch after your basic editing is done.
Shareability: With a click share to Google+, Facebook, Twitter and
others.
What we like: It gives you a stronger control on editing your photo as well as undoing edits, filters or reverting to the original.
Get it: Snapseed is available for free on iTunes and Google Play (Android OS 4.0 or later)
Hipstamatic
Rs.55
Hipstamatic makes your iPhone feel like an analog camera. You can choose the type of lens, kind of flash and the film that you want, with hundreds of different combinations possible. Once you set up the shot, the screen looks like an analog camera, complete with a small view finder with a faux leather finish. And the final photograph is a replica of what you’d get with the same combinations in a real, analog camera….
To read the complete article head to the Livemint.com website.

Fall of the great Indian editor

I gifted a recently launched book to my husband who loves to read breezy novels. This one was published by a top publishers in India and written by an established author who happens to be a famous Mumbai socialite. After reading, my husband pointed out how a character in the book who was supposed to stand on the dais in a scene magically enters the event a few paragraphs later. (No, it wasn’t a fantasy novel).

Another newly launched book which I am reading currently (based on a famous mythological character) is completely riddled with typos, repeat sentences and just lazy line editing. I apologetically wrote to its debut author on how my reading experience was being destroyed by the typos, spelling mistakes and loose paragraphs. He was kind enough to respond to me almost immediately expressing that the typos had cost him not only bad criticism but also a prestigious award. The publisher had outsourced the copy editing job and the freelancer made a complete mess of it. Now the publisher is re-publishing the book after editing it again.

There’s a lot written and spoken about bad writing and falling standards of writing in Indian English. Every time I go meet a publisher or an editor, invariably the discussion includes the kind of manuscripts that they get in their inbox every day or about the falling standards of writing in Indian English (cheap books, cheap bad writing). However, none of them seem to mention a need for a good editor.

Editing is a hard, frustrating, badly paid and anonymous job and I really bow down to those in the line. You are not recognised by anyone in media or publishing (you haven’t written the thing, so what’s your job again). And the everyday stress of typos is bad for your skin and back. But that doesn’t excuse the publishers from putting badly edited books on the shelves, less the top publishers of the country. What could be the reason that editing standards are falling down in spite of electronic editors, Microsoft Word’s automated correction and other technological help (or handicap as some editors I know might call them).

I can think of two . One, that most publishers get away with paying woefully low salaries (half of editors in the Media industry) to their editorial teams. Some of the small publishers outsource line editing and copy editing to a low-paid, newly out MA (English) graduate to save money. The result is a badly constructed book which is then blamed on authors (since editors are seldom named except in Acknowledgements from the author and who reads that anyway?)

Second, even in big publishing houses where the editorial team is a good 5-15 size, the weeding job is usually done by the lowest and the newest. Copy editing is given to the most inexperienced of the editors when you need a lot of experience to weed out a page.  That’s because weeding is considered a low-level job by experienced editors, who would rather move up the ladder to plot editing and managing of a team of editors.

Or could it be that there’s just too many books and the editorial team is too small and the number of books to take out each year, just too high? Editing is hard and has to be done in layers – multiple readings of the same paragraph till words start to swim in front of your eyes. If there are a lot of titles in a week, the editor will get exhausted.

I cannot think of any other reason for the falling standard in Indian books in English. Can you? Do email me if you know of something. I would love to include it. Till then, here’s a celebration of typos (all copyrights are included in the cartoons). Enjoy madi!

 

 

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Going virtual for real networking

Location-based networks and apps to connect with people in the neighbourhood who share similar interests

When Bangalore-based IT professional Pankaj Dugar settled in his third house in a new city in three years, he was left without any buddies to bike with. “It seemed like way too much work to ask around in the neighbourhood again to find someone who might like to play a quick round of golf or go biking with,” recalls Dugar. The stress to start over again in a new city made him wish that there was a better way to meet people who were interested in the same things as he was. “Facebook is used more to update your status or chat and connect to your existing friends and family online than to do offline, real-life things,” he says.
Dugar quit his job last year and set out to develop Treetle, a geo-location-based website which connects people with similar interests in the same neighbourhood, putting the focus on real-life activity and meeting rather than just online hangouts.
Treetle isn’t the only people-finding network—smartphone apps with GPS-location services are making it easier than ever to connect people by their interests. We take a look at some of these networks and also see how safe they are to use.
At the pool
At The Pool takes its motto “meet locals who love what you love” rather seriously. So seriously that you need an invite to join this website. “When someone requests an invite, if we don’t have members in their area or with their interests, we wait until we do before we send the invite,” says Alex Capecelatro, CEO and founder, At The Pool, in an email interview. The start-up was launched in July in Los Angeles, US, and it already has members from over 50 countries, including all major cities of India. Once you have an invite, you can log in with your Facebook account. Then you simply join pools based on your school, passion or types of people you want to meet. The pools have names like “foodies”, “hikers”, “musicians”, etc. If you are single, you can opt to meet other singles, or you can simply look for friends. Once you have made your profile, the website automatically introduces you to one person every day. “The goal is to introduce members to someone new each day in order to connect them offline, face-to-face,” says Capecelatro.
Safety set-up: You need to verify who you are through your Facebook account. The profile is only accessible to paired users. “We try to encourage members to meet in public, safe places, and to use best practices before meeting a stranger,” says Capecelatro.
Treetle
Launched in July, Treetle has 200 clubs and 3,000 members across India. Members have a dashboard to see all activities in the community. You can join clubs that you are interested in, make friends using the “Connections” tab and you will get news of forthcoming events every month. Treetle ensures that you actually get out of the chair by paying users for organizing events in your clubs. CEO Pankaj Dugar says, “Get online, get the information you need, then get offline to actually do things you enjoy.”
Safety set-up: Anyone who creates a user ID on Treetle needs to verify their cellphone number, or connect via their Facebook account. Treetle also asks the users to give “Brave Points” to trusted members, so the more points a person has, the more credible he/she is.
Join at: www.treetle.com
Banjo
Damien Patton, founder and CEO, created Banjo in 2011 when he missed meeting a buddy he hadn’t seen in years at the Boston airport because both of them were using different social networks. “Banjo notifies you when any of your friends are near on any social network,” he says in an email interview. Once you log in your details on Banjo from other social networks (it works with Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram, and LinkedIn, along with Gmail contacts) and switch on your GPS, you see posts by all your friends on a world map, along with posts from strangers marked as public. “Banjo aims to make sense of all the location-based content in your lives, enabling you to experience what’s going on anywhere in the world and surfacing places, people and things that matter to you,” says Patton. According to Patton, the average age of Banjo members is between 23 and 35 years and the app is available in 10 languages with members from over 190 countries.
Safety set-up: The only posts strangers can see are the ones marked public. Otherwise users will only see posts if they are your friends.
Join at: www.ban.jo (also available on iTunes and Google Play)
Mixer
Mixer, launched in September, is an app that works around locations—neighbourhoods, malls, restaurants or cities. You log in using your Facebook account and start a discussion linked to the location you are in. Other Mixer users in the same location can see, post comments, text and photos to that location. “When someone posts a message, it’s for the local community to see rather than for a single person to see,” says Chris Connell, CEO. When you participate in a conversation of a locality, you become part of the local community. When you don’t use the app in that area frequently then eventually you are no longer shown as part of that community. Other people in the community see your profile and you can see theirs. It’s a great way to connect with locals for suggestions on what to eat and what to do while travelling.
Safety set-up: No private communication is allowed on Mixer, it’s a public space to talk. Facebook login adds another safety layer to the network which shows only generalized locations.
Join at: www.getmixer.com (also available on iTunes)
BuzzMob
BuzzMob, launched in August 2011, uses GPS information to connect you to real-life places and events in your vicinity. The app is based on the idea of a “ring”, a particular space or event that you can become a part of.
Copyright (c) HT Media 

Who’s got the remote?

TV addiction is harmful for both body and mind. Here are smart ways to end your love affair with the idiot box

Beware, couch potatoes:<br />Aimless channel surfing can lower your life expectancy</p><p>
Every morning, as soon as her husband leaves for work and child for school, Ruchika Bhutani, 30, a part-time counsellor and homemaker based in Delhi, switches on the television in her bedroom. From late morning till 2am, the television is on, with either Bhutani, her husband or their six-year-old daughter watching their favourite shows. Even while Bhutani is doing her household chores, or her daughter is doing her homework or taking a nap, the television is on. “When my daughter takes her nap, I mute the TV, but don’t switch it off,” says Bhutani, who cannot imagine a world without television. “There’s simply no substitute for it. If I switch off the telly, I will get so bored that I would have to step out of the house.”
She sometimes misses her daily walk to follow the lives of characters of her favourite soaps and even ends up frustrated when a character doesn’t see through a possible danger or act in a certain way. “When I talk to my family and friends, many a times we end up discussing characters from the shows as if they were real and we are gossiping about them. It’s not normal,” she agrees, “but everyone knows about these characters. Don’t you?”
Though the psychological effects of television as an omnipotent presence in our lives are still being researched, it’s the physical effects of the leisure activity that require urgent action, according to Lennert Veerman, a senior research fellow at School of Population Health, The University of Queensland, Australia.
In August 2011, Veerman released a study titled “Television Viewing Time and Reduced Life Expectancy: A Life Table Analysis”, published online, which conclusively shows that every single hour of TV viewing by those above 25 years, shortens the life expectancy of the viewer by 20 minutes. Make it 6 hours of TV every day and it might cost you five years of life expectancy. “Since TV viewing is a form of inactivity, the reverse of exercise, we expected an effect on life expectancy, but the size of this effect surprised even us,” Veerman says. Various studies in the past decade have linked TV viewing with diabetes, back pain, obesity, cardiovascular problems and other life-shortening diseases, but its addiction remains a fact in modern life. The first thing that many of us do as soon as we enter our homes is to switch the television on. Veerman feels that the habit is so omnipotent that researchers have to shift the focus of research from benefits of exercising to the adverse effect of too much sitting (in spite of exercising daily) in front of the television. “The good news is that if you replace just half an hour of TV watching with walking, it will be able to prevent disease,” he says in an email interview.
Reduce it every day
By reducing your average TV watching time from about 5 hours everyday to 2.5 hours, you can burn an extra 119 calories a day, according to the study “Effects of Television Viewing Reduction on Energy Intake and Expenditure in Overweight and Obese Adults”, which was published in Internal Medicine in December 2009.
“Television is a very sedentary activity, burning only slightly more calories than sleep. Reducing your television viewing time by half may result in burning calories equivalent of walking a little over a mile per day, or eight miles a week,” says Jennifer Otten, postdoctoral research fellow, Stanford University, California, US, and one of the authors of the study, in an email interview. Some of her participants who used that extra time to walk their dogs or sign up for a yoga class could turn their lives around.
Do it: Quit aimless channel surfing and instead make a TV-watching plan each week. Figure out the shows you cannot do without and sift them from the shows that you hate watching but have a habit of watching. Now set an alarm. Once the show you wanted to watch is over, switch the television off and do something else.
Keep the background noise off
According to a study published in October, titled “Background Television in the Homes of US Children”, in the journalPediatrics, children in US homes are exposed to nearly 4 hours of background television on a typical day from eight months of age.
“Researchers have found that the presence of background television significantly reduces children’s time spent playing with toys as well as their focused attention during play and decreased the quantity and quality of parent-child interaction,” says Jessica Taylor Piotrowski, one of the authors of the study and assistant professor, Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, in an email interview. Piotrowski also has data which she plans to publish next year on how children exposed to background television have more difficulties with executive functions like cognitive behaviour and self-regulation.
Do it: Make it a rule—no television while the sun is still out. Encourage your child to get out and play in the sun. Take the TV out of your child’s bedroom and turn it off when no one’s watching it. Put on some music if it’s too silent for your liking.
Do chores alongside
A paper published in July in the online journal BMJ Open, “Sedentary Behaviour And Life Expectancy In The USA: A Cause-Deleted Life Table Analysis”, proves that watching television reduces your lifespan. It’s not the activity per se, but the sitting involved that shortens your lifespan, according to Peter Katzmarzyk, professor, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, US, and lead author of the paper. “People who sit most of the day have a higher risk of dying prematurely rather than those who sit less,” he says in an email interview. The study builds up on previous work that shows sitting and watching TV have an impact on not only the individual but also the population’s health.
Do it: Stand and watch television and you would be on your way to a healthier lifestyle. Do chores like ironing, paperwork, washing dishes or exercise—use dumb-bells, stretch or do sit-ups—while you watch your show.
Copyright (c) HT Media

Gaiman’s 8 rules of writing

Without any godmother/father or anyone to guide, writing a book has been a process of running, walking, crawling and creeping through a huge black room without any walls and a floor which is potholed. It just wouldn’t have been possible if I hadnt had the wonderful world of Internet by my side, and endless gyan from my godparents and guides—authors I love, their writings, blogs, interviews and how to write action sequences (which I am superbly bad at). If it hadn’t been for occasional flashes of their torches, my writing would have continued to fumble in a black hole.

At moments I am down, one of my fave newsletters is the Brain Pickings which gives you inspirational two-bytes to keep you writing and doing stuff. Today I share with you one of my favourite writer’s thoughts on how to write taken from the website. I do not religiously follow Neil Gaiman’s blog, one of the most  popular and successful writers in Fantasy today, but I did nod at EVERYTHING he suggested down here.

1. Write

2. Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.

3. Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.

4. Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.

5. Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

6. Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

7. Laugh at your own jokes.

8. The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.


I nod at everything in enthusiastic agreement. Believe me, this is how I finished my second book two months before I had thought I will finish it. I just kept on writing. I am at number 4 in the sequence and taking a break. After that, I will start with the editing and fixing of the book. Thanks Gaiman, for saying exactly the thing needed to me to keep going!

Open sky to open the soul

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I have always felt that a daytrip out of the city, in sunshine, with the open sky above you and the green fields all around you, is the best way to rejuvenate your senses. I visited the awe-inspiring Somnathpura temple this weekend with a bunch of friends. It was my second visit to this ASI Heritage temple located near Mysore. It still completely flummoxed me with its beautiful and made my heart palpitate with wonder. The temple, done in the baroque-ian Hoysala style of architecture, is a mammoth of fine sculpturing. Can’t believe that this art was woefully lost in the dark tunnels of time. What I love about the temple is that all round it, there are scenes carved on the walls that include gods, goddesses, dancing girls, musicians, gurus, all kinds of animals. It kind of opens up my mind on the life that was led in those times (13th Century). Can you connect to people who lived in this same space some 800 years ago? Were they too like us, with emotions like us, or were they something completely different, with ethics completely different from us? Here are some pictures to keep you dreaming.

 

These pictures make me write new stories. I am always thankful for the beauty in this country to inspire.

Working for giants

Advertisements have always fascinated me. They reflect desires, cravings and thoughts of the people that they are aiming at. Ads, all be it print, or television or online, show who we want to become, what we aspire towards. I was browsing in the morning through the Thursday edition of my loo-paper, Bangalore Mirror, when I came across these two advertisements in their recruitment section:

Now, let me add in a disclaimer before I continue – this blog post is NOT about the companies to whom these adverts belong to. It is just about what I thought about when I saw these ads.

 

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Both these recruitment ads target middle class professionals (in Bangalore) with something that they would want: Work with a Giant or a Global Organisation or an MNC. It’s something that Indian professionals aspire towards—a big, fat, well-known giant of a company. To work for a big organisation which has gazillions of employees. And maybe big, fat, giant cheques too. Bigger, the better. Big is good, giant is simply spectacular. It’s about feeling good that your name comes before a well-recognised brand, an MNC/foreign brand. Working for a Giant is about aspiration. Like in the second ad which shows a young woman and says: My parents are proud of me (because I work in an MNC. Rhymes, too!). Indians want to work in big places. Bigger the company, better it is for one’s ego. Bankers prefer to give loan to people who work in these giant organisations, thinking it might be safer to. If you tell a banker that you work on your own, the assumption is, I don’t know how much you earn, so I won’t give you a credit card.

In the pubs, over a drink, you hear proud, arrogant conversations like: I have just joined (add big brand MNC name) company. If the person sitting opposite doesn’t work for a giant, she answers apologetically, that she’s on her own, or works for some relatively unknown mid-size company. Come to think of it, the person might be saying that one is a VP or CEO of an organisation (big giant ego-tags instead of big giant company tags).

Ironically, I have never heard these conversations veer towards what these two people might actually be doing in the big or small company. For what kind of work you do, is not that important, not for parents or friends or relatives. There are two things that everyone wants to know, actually three: your giant position, your giant company’s name, your giant paycheck.

An NRI lady, who has returned from the USA to open an NGO in Bangalore, noted the question that people ask her in this city: Where do you work? (as opposed to What do you do?) Since then, I (who work on my own and I am NO giant) have noticed what people ask me as conversation starters: Where do you work? AND Who do you work for? When I tell them, they lose interest. It’s as if the servile mentality which started with the 200 years of British rule still continues in this city (I work for the British government as a clerk, said proudly). But, what about the kind of work you do in it? Are you a clerk in a big org?

I just remembered an incident which happened to me at the passport office in Bangalore last year. The IAS officer (the final one who took the passport for renew) asked me where I worked. When I replied, on my own, a conversation of assumptions developed. His assumption was: Oh, so you are a writer, eh? That’s not a career/profession. He was sure about it. When I asked why, his answer was, it doesn’t pay much, does it? Then it’s just a hobby and not a career. With that he dismissed me. As if, I, as an un-earning member of the society, who does uneconomic things like writes blogs all day for free view and stories for pittance, is not doing something worthwhile, for a simple reason that I don’t contribute to the economics of the society. That’s the aspiring middle class of India today. That’s most of  the people you meet in Bangalore. They want giant jobs, giant salaries, giant cars, giant houses to appease giant egos.

And I am a little ant in a world of giants. I like it that way.

Sachin tattooed on my skin

 

Real life story of a ten-rupee note…

 

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The note, recovering from the washing machine fiasco

 

Recently, a ten rupee note was discovered, dried, wrinkled, faded and folded in a washed jeans pocket by this writer. In exchange for the security of a dirty, almost-empty, much-travelled wallet, the ten rupee note revealed its yet untold story:

‘Atleast I would not die in a pocket, forgotten, slowly decaying into mulch,’ it says, thankful. For that is what it thought would be its end when it had been travelled from a sabzi-seller to a forgetful human hand who placed it in a rough, but a pocket of a pair of jeans.

‘That’s always a little dangerous, a pair of jeans. For you can be easily forgotten and then before you know, you are in the washing machine, screaming to be let out. But who will listen to you? The credit card receipt, the coins and the scribbled on notes, all are drowning too and too busy trying not to be shrunk and converted to mulch,’ it told this journalist.

Now lying in the comfort of a wallet, it hopes its next destination is someplace exotic.

‘You never know where you will land up,’ it says, ‘it’s not like I can control my exchange from one hand to another or in any way control  my destiny. Humans use us, millions of us, everyday, callously passing us on from one to another for things they don’t need. We don’t have a say in where we want to go. Did a note ever refuse to go into a rickshaw puller’s rough hands? Or a filthy hand of a garbage collector, his hand squeezing me so tight that I thought I would disintegrate? Or even a greedy, soft hand which keeps me under a mattress for years, without air or light? Sometimes we are even buried alive and forgotten until someone changes upon a treasure. No, we are nothing but things for humans.’

This tenner was created some five years ago (it doesn’t remember its exact birthdate) and thrown into the overflowing (with its type) economy of India . It already looks like it had been through some rather rough times (other than the washing machine).

‘I am not a big number. There are millions of tenners like me out there. I am exchanged fast, without any hesitation. But it still hurts if someone abuses me and calls me chillard. I….’ the note stops, overwhelmed with feeling, ‘All the tenners want is some respect from humans. There was a time when my ancestors were put in iron safes by clean hands with a photo of goddess Lakshmi next to it. We were celebrated, we were worshipped. We had a festival to our name.’

But these are just stories that the ten-rupee note has heard from its elders, who have heard it from theirs. Now, times are quite different. Now, these stories have become myths, told to each other to provide comfort for one’s purpose-less, disrespected life. Tenners are nothing but short change now and that’s the dark reality that each of them face every day in their lives.

‘Not even the hundreds, no mam! It’s only the five-hundreds or the thousands who are coveted now and get the privilege of a pooja. Though I hear,’ he whispers, carefully looking around the wallet, in case there’s a big note lying around (There’s not. I am a writer, my wallet is always empty), ‘that the thousands might all be recalled you know.’ Recalling is the worse nightmare of any note, of any denomination and age. Something worse than death.

‘To be torn, burnt and destructed. To simply cease to exist,’ it shudders. Every year, thousands of notes of all denomination are recalled by the RBI, after they have been abused, become torn, unreadable and broken by rough, hungry exchanges between humans. Then they are burnt without any ceremony or prayer for peace for their services to humankind.

‘That’s the least your race can do! Respect us for our service,’ it shouts, angry, ‘Humans have a saying that money makes the world run around. Show me where I was ever running things around me?’

When I ask it about the scribble on its side, with faded ink, it smiles again. ‘It was in Kerala, it says, proud that it has travelled so far. (If you can’t read it in the photo, the writing says: ‘Sachin Tendulkar Fans Association, Kerala’) I was donated by a fan of Mr Sachin Tendulkar himself, to a diligent volunteer of the STFA who then tattooed this on me. It was my proudest moment. Tell me how many tenners you have seen, who can boast of a name of a celebrity on their skin?’

When I tell it no one, except for it, it says, its eyes glazed with memory, ‘Those were the days, madam. Those were the days.’ It entered the emptied wallet, glad for space for a while and waited, for a new adventure. In some ways, thankful that atleast travelling won’t stop, even when the economy tanks. It’s only a tenner after all.


Writer’s note: I have tried to quote the tenner as closely as possible. As promised to it, the ten-rupee note has been carefully ironed, as new, and sent off to a new travel. May it never be recalled.


PS: This post is dedicated to my brother, along with whom I have counted innumerable number of money for the temple that my grandfather was a treasurer for. And this post is dedicated to my darling grandfather. The note brought a smile, a tear and lots of memories. Over the years, I have seen many interesting scribbles on notes, from association markers, to life quotes, to love proposals, to messages to each other. I have always loved reading them and imagined their stories. This time around though, the story that came to me was this note’s. Fascinating!