It is hard not to get energized by supercop, mother, social worker and TV anchor Kiran Bedi (born 9 June, 1949). She is a bundle of energy and is always in a hurry. Her diminutive frame is deceptive. She is a woman of conviction and resilience to do what she has set out to. She has always attracted admirers and critics in equal measure.
You are the rising star of the corporation. You are working at building a resume that will qualify you for the corner office in the next few years. You want to set the world record for being the youngest head of the corporation. In anticipation, you have started looking up models of corporate jets you could buy and the power suits you will need to order for the swearing in ceremony. In the midst of all this comes the email on the blackberry that your manager wants to know if you would be interested in a short term assignment to New Widgetovia, the country where your company has struck gold. You would need to be there for three months... maybe six... ummm ... a little bit more perhaps but hopefully not.
Many moons back when I started off my career as a HR person, I had a chance to attend a training program. All the HR folks used to have this once a year get together and just bond. I was briefed by my boos that being the lowest in the food chain, I had to just take the opportunity to get to know the big fish in HR. Being a really obedient kind of person I took that advice to heart. I spent the next tea break running around that huge hall like a headless chicken collecting names and faces. I will tell you upfront that I have difficulty remembering zillions of names with matching faces. Within fifteen minutes of this maniacal pursuit of perfection, I discovered that the names and faces were all a big jumbled up noodle soup. I gave up.
To be able to write and to have access to forums that will publish one’s writing widely is a privilege. As a journalist and a reader I’m left in no doubt that there will always be people to write about the rich, the powerful, the glamorous; sometimes when they have nothing to say. But writing about such people, doesn’t impact them in the way writing about the marginalised and the alienated does. To write about those who have no voice, or whose voice has been silenced, is to empower them. Writing about the farmers of Vidarbha, who have been committing suicide since the 1990s, at one time at a rate of one every 12 hours, for example, has had a tangible impact on the political attention and economic stimulus offered to their community and their families. Having another profile written about Shah Rukh Khan, however, makes no difference to him, and frankly to readers—what more is there to learn about him?
I suppose the pyschologists and pyschiatrists - called "shrinks" in popular parlance - have their own code of silence. Once they are certified to practice, they are not supposed to give away the secret tests and techniques about how they figure out of the person lying on the couch is normal or abnormal depending on the response to the tests. To the person being tested this can evoke different feelings eg Awe or Aw (short for awful) and everything in between. So naturally people are anxious - which by itself could tell the shrink stuff about you that you don't want them to know.
It is truly a magical moment when you read the manuscript and suddenly feel that there is nothing more left to add or to take away. If you add stuff you will feel the need to trim the fat and you cannot take away a single word without leaving gaps in the mind of the reader. It is that moment when you feel the most self-confident. You are ready to take the book to a publisher.
You started as a small fish with dreams of being a biggie. You routinely practiced your moves. You tried to learn new tricks to please those who held power to hand out generous changes in S&B (Salary and Bonus). You regularly preened yourself as you passed the mirror, admiring the lean mean fighting machine that you continued to be ... at least for the initial few years. When you met the other alum from your college or B School, you traded notes to see if anyone had learnt a trick that you had no clue about. There were usually a few who always had something clever to share. You read professional journals. The names were all familiar. The Professors would keep egging you on to read more and more and yet would sneer at your term paper before labeling it a B+. That just built in you the grim determination to keep slaving away at sharpening your skills until you could extract an A+ from the hard-to-please faculty. That was then.
So the word of caution to employers and employees alike: Don't do anything that would make you squirm if it made the headlines of every newspaper and TV channel in the world and where the anchors or scribes are your sworn enemies. Till you know what is good for you stick to Tweet Nothings.
How many books does an author have to sell before it is classified as bestseller in India? Why are Indian authors suddenly in demand? Have readers started noticing them because there is a proliferation of these authors in the bookshops in India? I believe there are many factors that have tapped into the collective potential of Indian authors - especially those who write in English. The foremost is the willingness of international publishing houses to identify local talent. What has happened is that readers who snootily ignored books that were not literary have started reading what was labeled as "commercial fiction or masala fiction".As you read this article by Sandhya Iyer, notice the happy confluence of events that lead to Indian Writing In English (IWE) growing out of its elitist bearings in the last few years to appeal to a wider mass readership, offering a variety like never before, says Sandhya Iyer in this article.
