Together, let's make reading, a habit!

Making Reading a Beautiful Way of Life

Well, this news article that I happened to read today in the Chennai Edition of The Times of India, is the spur and the reason for this little post!

It was quite an alarming revelation, and such a shocking indictment of the sordid state of affairs that we in academia have come to!

Isn’t it a matter of deep regret then, that our children, even in third grade, cannot read the alphabet!?

Too shocking! Ain’t it?

But well, let’s not blame anyone now for this alarming crisis that’s staring at us!

At a time and age when reading skills of our children both at school and in college have taken a nose-dive, it has become all the more imperative on our part, as teachers, in this noble path of enlightening our students, to step in and plug the breach!

What went wrong?

What exactly went wrong?

Where exactly did it go wrong?

And how do we fix the problem?, [NOT the blame!]

How do we gear up as teachers together, to do some concrete action, some noble action, to stem the rot!? To plug the breach?

The first step is to educate our learners on the importance of reading!

And on this count, there’s a lot at stake in our good ol’ libraries.

Many might tend to shrug off and make light of, the immense value of a library in these tech-savvy days! But they’re quite mistaken on this count!

Last year, I personally hired a tourist bus, yes a tourist bus, that came straight into campus, near Selaiyur Hall gate, to take all my first year MA students to the Anna Centenary Library and make them sit there and read for themselves any good book/s that they found interesting.

Our kids started relishing much this new-found habit of reading, and they also seemed to approach it as an engaging, and therapeutic exercise!

Soon, over the next three weekends, a little group of students expressed their desire to go again to the same library!

So yet again, I went along with them, and demonstrated to them the art of reading books effectively! Thanks to the training I had received from my beloved librarian Dr. Manalan! 

Well, yet another eureka moment on reading happened to me, when I read through Professor Neil McCaw’s [University of Winchester, UK], marvellous book titled, How to Read Texts. The very next moment, I impulsively wrote him a long mail, highly appreciative of his book, and also requested him if I could quote a few lines from his book on our academic blog. This was way back in the year 2012! Professor McCaw, the kind heart that he is, promptly obliged, and then I did this post! You may want to read this post on the importance of reading, HERE! It was also carried in our College Magazine of that particular year’s, in 2012! I also had it photocopied and distributed to all my literature students back then!

Well, the joys of reading quite soon caught up with them, and even today, quite regularly, I get snaps of our kids enjoying their time in the portals of this grand library – the Anna Centenary Library, Adyar, Chennai.

Now they testify for themselves the abundant joy they find in reading books!

Reading then has to become a habit for our kids!

And we’ve got to strive in that direction!

'Yudhishthira has come to understand the right way to engage with the world'

Gurcharan Das | The Difficulty of Being Good

Commonalities and convergences seem to abound much-o-much in the works of renowned corporate honchos Rajat Gupta and Gurcharan Das.

I guess not much of literary discussions have come up on this subject!

And hence me thought of venturing with added delight into this post!

And well, I wish to make it known right here at the outset that, this little post is no way meant to pick on one author at the expense of another. To each their muse, and to each their charm! 

Still, a comparative outlook [the likes of which Spivak advocates] helps analyse and evaluate a work of art a tad better to help ‘the reader’ in ‘we’ to form sound evaluations and better perspectives to approaching texts and er… um… their authors as well, ain’t it?

And hence also this post!

Coming now to the point of our present ponder!

Well, both Rajat Gupta and Gurcharan Das were once big shots on the corporate ladder. Both had made it big in their own vibrant ways on this same ladder towards fame and popularity. Both have had the Bhagawad Gita as their inspiration. [You might want to read our past post on Rajat Gupta here]

However, divergences galore from here on between the two! While to Rajat Gupta, the Gita becomes a delightful shield and a ‘shelter’ in his ‘time of storm’, for Gurcharan Das the Gita is more a source of strength and succour for all of the time!

Gurcharan Das finds in the Gita various principles of leadership and management beautifully enshrined and contained within the temperament and the actions of each of its cast and characters.

And unlike Rajat Gupta who had to beat a kinda hasty retreat from the corporate world and fade into oblivion, and ‘become’ a writer, more to defend himself, Gurcharan Das gracefully bowed out of the corporate world at the age of fifty, to ‘be’ a writer, just to follow the call of his own sweet heart!

Rajat Gupta, a corporate honcho, cites mostly from Tagore and a little from Kipling!

On the other hand, in Gurcharan Das you can see a beautiful literary being inscribed within a nerdy corporate honcho!

He quotes left, right and centre on all things literary! Be it on Greek mythology or on British Literature, be it on dharma or on the cardinal virtues, be it on envy, where he light-o-lighta attacks Roy - Arundhati Roy on her essay after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack, which according to him is a sad reflection of an envy, prompted by America’s success, or be it on his lovely teachers at Harvard, or on his take on the Jews as being victims of a ‘general envy’, he’s got it all in his almost 500 page long gripping read of sorts!

And yes, his take on ‘envy’ is super-amazing! I think this part forms the crux and the cream of the cake! And so startling and shocking that he gives some real insights into envy of the ‘academic type’, where jealousy, envy and strife are so rife that it’s much more dangerous and sinister than even the ones they have in the corporate world, he opines!

Deivameyyy!  ;-)

After Arundhati Roy, his next target is Anil! Anil Ambani! Says he –

In 2007, Anil Ambani was the fifth richest person in the world according to the Forbes list of billionaires, but he was consumed with a Duryodhana-like envy for his more accomplished older brother, Mukesh, who was placed a notch higher on the list.

And next he comes up with the ‘morality play’ within the ‘Ambani family play!’

'The rhythm of writing transforms absence into an enduring presence'

The bonds of memory that bind us to the past | Crumpled Paper Boat

Seminars are meant to be platforms of advanced study on a specific subject, with the avowed aim of getting better insights on the subject through intense and productive discussions! 

Added, if the conveners to the Seminar are reasonably convinced that the insights thus gained, gleaned and garnered are a real value addition to the already existing body of knowledge, then academic propriety demands that the organizers either video the entire event, or better, publish the papers presented in the Seminar with a good publisher, as soon as possible and have them disseminated across academia across the world!

One such Advanced Seminar of five days, was held at the School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico, on the topic, “Literary Anthropology”, and the Conveners were Anand Pandian and Stuart McLean. [from Sunday, April 21, to Friday, April 25, 2013].

The impactful observations that emanated during the five long days of intense deliberations and presentations were then promptly made available in the form of a 265-page book, edited by the conveners themselves.

I happened to read a few interesting articles from this lovely book titled, Crumpled Paper Boat edited by the conveners of the Seminar, Anand Pandian and Stuart McLean.

‘There has always been something peculiar about the genre of ethnography, claimed by anthropology as its own, yet forever edging close to travelogue, literature, and memoir’, say Anand Pandian and Stuart McLean in their delightful prologue to the book.

And I quote from their prologue – just kutty little snippets for y’all -

The relationship between reality and fiction has become ever more fraught in the United States in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, widely seen to herald an alarming new era of deliberate falsehoods peddled as “alternative facts.”

The Oxford English Dictionary actually declared post-truth the word of the year in 2016, “denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Critics have rightly challenged such claims in the political sphere, insisting on the objective reality of things like climate change, or the absence of any evidence tying refugees from certain countries to terrorism in the United States.

For it is undeniable that such tales have the capacity to remake reality itself, to reshape the very substance of the here-and-now and the ways in which human actors engage the world at hand.

And for once, I could see Anand Pandian and Stuart McLean doing a discourse on writing about the art of writing!

Here they go again –

If writing involves risk, does it not also entail responsibility? If the possible and the impossible, the factual and the counterfactual, the present and the absent, the living and the dead all belong equally to life’s reality, where does this leave our responsibility to be faithful? In what ways are we responsible, for example, to those whose lives we seek to write about?

'Creativity is to come up with something that is new & surprising and that has value'

When Byron meets Babbage! | Kevin & Marcus on AI

Well, going swaing-o-swainggg down those good ol’ days of yore, of almost close to two decades ago, days and weeks filled with seasons of nostalgic reveries and contemplative memories, when you had such a jolly and jocund good company of kindred spirits, ‘one equal temper of heroic hearts’, after your own heart and soul, when you had all the time in the world at your own sweet disposal, well, then, you quite can’t do without touching gentle on a few of those sweet chords of note from days of yore, and happily chew the cud albeit slightly on a wistful mode too!

One such ‘wistful mode’ ruminations takes me back to a particular day’s event, way way back in the year 2003, when a few of us, a happy-go-lucky, jocund band of youngistans, - as was wont with us time and again, - we hired a cab with our ever-punctual ‘Palani travels’, our pushpak viman of all seasons for this particularly memorable city ride of ours! 

Once you had fixed up on a Palani cab, you can rest assured, that you’re not gonna have any cancellation or time delay of any sorts! Such was their punctuality!

As expected, sharp at ten we had Mr. Swami, our favourite cabbie giving us a missed call, as a sign that he’s up and ready to go! An excited cabbie makes an excited you, ain’t it? ;-)

And where pray did Mr. Swami drive us down? Well, yes, on this particular day, that marks the reason for this ‘book’ post, Mr. Swami our cab driver, was literally on full throttle mode, as we had asked him to be at the British Council Library at 11 am on the dot at the library’s premises [at which time library services get started!]

Yes! This day had added reason for delight because, we had the grand annual clearance sale of our treasure troves of knowledge – library books of all hues at the British Council Library, Anna Salai, Chennai. These ‘Withdrawn books’ on a nominal rate, were up for sale exclusively for its members! And that’s enough reason for cheers alleyyy! :-)

We had to be there this early because, sadly, and quite unfortunately, a few up and coming engineering colleges usually deputed their professors in their yellow buses, to lug up as many cartons of books as possible, for their libraries! It was customary for many such buses and tempo travellers to jostle their way into the parking space, with professors who double up as purveyors, surveyors, and conveyors quietly bulldozing their might into the crowd of bibliophiles to try their luck out, by casting their nets as deep as could be ;-) to get for themselves the huge shoals that they could possibly lay their hands on! ;-)

Some colleges had strategies chalked out over their bored oops board meetings, to outsmart others of their ilk to grab the greatest bulk, all for themselves, to bear away their treasured spoils, unmindful of the bevy of bibliophiles who have been waiting all along to get their quadrans’ worth!

Buddy Prem and myself, we were all eyes, nose and ears to this annual mela of sorts, that quite soon turned itself into a hurly-burly melee of sorts!

In spite of this hullabaloo in the BCL orchard, ;-) we did manage to get for ourselves our car’s worth of books! Mr. Swami swift acted saviour here, and helped us carry our little carton loads to our good ol’ ‘ambyyy’ cab! [Ambassador]

A pile of such books we still relish, we still cherish!

Yesterday, one such book from the past, I attempted to take out from my bookcase! And for a purpose at that!

It’s a Kevin Warwick read and it’s titled, In the Mind of the Machine: The Breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence.

Kevin Warwick, by the way, is Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, England, says the book. But a current look at his profile and you get that, Kevin is now Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at Coventry University in the United Kingdom.

Kevin's brief profile

This post will attempt to compare this 1999 read by Kevin Warwick on Artificial Intelligence [AI] with a 2019 read, again on Artificial Intelligence titled, The Creativity Code, by Marcus du Sautoy, and put forth in this little space here, the points of view of both these wizards on AI, although a gap of twenty years separate their thoughts  and takes on the subject!

Kevin Warwick is a British engineer, while Marcus du Sautoy is a British mathematician, and eleven years younger to Kevin!

Kevin, back then, has had a radically different viewpoint on AI, although he seems to have been quite a seer on the power of AI over the years!

Says he in his introductory lines to the book –

Humans live only once. We are only born once and experience everything in life afresh. We never know exactly what to expect. When we die our individual memories, many of no consequence whatsoever, die with us. With machines this is not the case. Machines can be born over and over, and retain memories from one life into the next!

Says the seer in Kevin, next –

I believe that in the next ten to twenty years some machines will become more intelligent than humans. The pace of technological chance, as we know it today, merely supports these beliefs.

He’s been a real seer of sorts on this aspect, ain’t he? The future, to Kevin then, is kinda bleak in a way, and he’s almost predicted a life of slavery for humankind out there in the near future!

However, Kevin is quite quiet on two aspects: Firstly, he doesn’t talk about the ‘code’ that governs human intelligence and creativity, which Marcus ably does!

Secondly, he is quite hush hush on the aspect of creativity to AI!

Perchance also because AI was just beginning to make a mark!

Designate one day of the week, perhaps a Saturday or Sunday, a day of technological “fasting”

IKIGAI | How to turn work and free time into spaces for growth!

The best is for the last! And this would be our last on Francesc Miralles’s!

Yes! And the best!

This short and sweet read is sure gonna give you enough calorie power for your soul for a long long time to come!

Francesc has an amazing narrative style that so endears itself to the reader! Any reader! His insights on any idea, are a huge source of fascination and awe!

And that we know! And that we know well-o-well, Ain’t we!? The proof of the pudding lies in the eating! And we did eat and relish much-o-much his love in lowercase! Ain’t we!?

Looking back, over the past couple of months, I guess I haven’t quite read a book as impactful and as motivational as this Francesc Miralles’s presentation, titled, IKIGAI, in a long long time!

This particular book titled, IKIGAI: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, in especial, has added charm! And that’s well because it’s by the famed ‘Francesc – Hector’ duo! And ooh boyyy! On ‘life motivation’, these guys have really got ya hooked full throttle onto their pages with that quaint ‘abracadabra’ touch and feel to each of their pages!

Full fuller fullest credits to Heather Cleary for giving us all such a realistic feel and aura off the original, in translating this amazing read into English!

This post hence would focus on five salients from the book, among the fifty plus mighty ideas spread across each of its pages!

Firstly, on the Francesc – Hector duo’s introduction to ‘What’s the meaning of my life?’ with relation to the much-renowned Japanese concept of ‘ikigai’.

Secondly, the duo’s discussion on the delightful dictum, ‘Going with the flow’ with a clear objective in mind.

Thirdly, the duo’s advocacy of concentrating on a single task at hand, one at a time!

Fourthly, their take on judicious and cautious use of technological gadgets!

Fifthly, and finally, their rich ideas for ‘creating a space and time free of distractions!’

Now let’s move on and focus intently, on all the five points, in their sweet order, that Francesc and Hector put forward for us all –

1

‘What is the meaning of my life? Is the point just to live longer, or should I seek a higher purpose? Why do some people know what they want and have a passion for life, while others languish in confusion?’

These are the dominant questions that bulk large almost through the entire gamut of this sweet-sweeter-sweetest soup for the soul!

The duo then proceed to take us to the mysterious word ‘Ikigai’!

This Japanese concept, which translates roughly as ‘the happiness of always being busy’, is like logotherapy, but it goes a step beyond, they say! Yes folks, Viktor Frankl has got some real delightful reams of paper white, dedicated for him on this delectable read!

And the duo also admit that, while researching on this amazing concept – Ikigai, they found out for certain that, not a single book in the fields of psychology or personal development has been done or dedicated to this concept thus far, to bringing this profound philosophy to the West!

Wake up little West! ;-)

Now how does Ikigai inspire people to stay active until the very end?

To find out the answers all by themselves, the duo decided to set out on a voyage of sorts, to go see and study for themselves, first hand, the secrets of the Japanese centenarians in person!

As soon as they set foot on Japanese soil, in this particular town, they say that they were able to sense and to feel for themselves, the unbelievable friendliness of its residents, who laughed and joked incessantly amid lush green hills fed by crystalline waters.

when we folks, back in Chennai tried our hands at Ikigai ;-)

‘An uncommon joy flows from its inhabitants and guides them through the long and pleasurable journey of their lives’, say they!

The purpose of this book is to bring the secrets of Japan’s Ikigai, to find your own Ikigai, add they!

And that’s because, those who discover their Ikigai have everything they need for a long and joyful journey through life, observe they!

'when some small act of kindness sets off a chain of events'

love in lowercase | the inspiration continues...

This is in continuation of our past post on love in lowercase by francesc miralles, translated into English by Julie Wark!

Well, love in lowercase has some interesting life quotes! Some of them are real invigorating to the core!

It’s about how the little things in your life can make a huge difference to your perspective and attitude!

To this end, as expected, the Butterfly effect is at work in this lovely read as well!

There’s this instance where Samuel says, 

The fluttering of a butterfly’s wings can cause a cataclysm on the other side of the world. A hurricane was now roaring in to blow down the façade behind which I’d confined my life. There is no weatherman who can forecast this kind of cyclone.

And later towards the end of the book he opines, 

'It’s when some small act of kindness sets off a chain of events that comes around again in the form of multiplied love.'

Indeed, the little cat in lowercase could make such a huge difference to Samuel and his entire new year! The cat in fact, makes him interact with people outside of his little world!

Where was this chain of cause and effect taking me? What about the moon? What was the moon doing in all of this?

There seemed to be a direct correlation between my opening up to the outside world—Mishima, Titus, and Valdemar, without forgetting my sister and her husband—and Gabriela’s triple appearance.

Maybe the only people worthy of love are those who love indiscriminately, without denying to some what they give to others.

Thousands of candles can be lit by just one candle, and the life of that candle will not be shorter because of it. Happiness is never diminished by being shared.

And then comes the discourse on cats that are quite a treat to pet lovers of the feline variety!

So here goes Francesc Miralles -

A cat in your home is a reminder that you must always pay attention. We frequently miss opportunities because we are not aware of them. Cats refine their senses, monitor their surroundings, and are alert to the smallest change. Theirs is a serene alertness, full of active patience. While resting they are attuned to the people around them, ready to act when necessary. Thanks to this watchfulness, events tend to turn out in their favor.

I mulled over other themes I could develop: a cat’s hygiene, its ability to disappear before a disagreeable turn of events, its almost supernatural intuition…

Cats are said to be selfish, but in reality they’re just smart. They won’t come to you if they can make you go to them. Their power resides in their apparent indifference. They prefer to let you love them than to put their feelings at risk by revealing them. Like the good Taoists that they are, they do without doing and rule without ruling. They limit themselves to keeping their dignity and acting according to their whims. They don’t go looking for love and therefore obtain it without asking. Dogs have a master. Cats have servants.

In other words, what we are isn’t important. What we do with what we are is important. Hours are worthless unless you know what to do with them.”

love in lowercase | francesc miralles

The premiere post for 2020 AD on this our blog, will be a dedication to all cat lovers, and with a purpose at that!

Cat lovers are a ‘breed’ apart! I’ve known some great lovers of cats all along! Me too, being Mea mea maxima culpa, my lord! ;-)

Sai Shri, Canadian Victy, Prof. Rasheeda, Bhuva, are all great, ardent lovers of the feline family!

Even in Islam, as we all know, Prophet Muhammad was a great lover of cats, Muezza being his favourite. The Prophet loved him so much, that he would even allow the cat to sit on his lap whenever he gave his discourses.

Quite a number of interesting tales on Muezza - the sweet little cat - abound. One story is that, little Muezza saved the prophet from the poisonous bite of a deadly snake. On yet another instance, Muezza was sleeping peacefully on the Prophet’s robes when the call to prayers was sounded. The Prophet, not willing to disturb Muezza on his snooze mode, quite gently sliced off that part of his robe to allow little Muezza his forty winks! Then he gracefully stroked little Muezza three times, a gesture that would give the agility and the ability to land and to stand on his feet whatever the situation!

In such instance, on a parallel vein, our first ‘book’ post for 2020 would hinge on how a little cat by name Mishima, transformed the life of a lecturer by name Samuel, right on New Year’s Day! Samuel, the assistant lecturer is a great language enthusiast himself, and Mishima literally opens his eyes to the important little things of his life. Mishima also leads him to Gabriela, a girl whom he had fallen in love with as a boy, but since Gabriela doesn’t have feelings for him anymore, he moves on confident, and finds meaning in the sweet little things that are almost always in lowercase, in one’s life!

This feel-good novel titled, love in lowercase would be a real eye-opener of sorts to we, thought me!

Every page of this motivational, feel-good novel, leaves you gasping and thirsting for more! It literally stirs a million chords deep within you, and makes you spontaneously head for your guitar or your violin and start strumming to those sweet stirs of the chords that have cast their pleasant spell on you for this longgg!

No wonder the book has been translated into thirty languages and counting!

Coming back to the book –

The epitaph that opens the book bares it all in such gentle fashion for the reader –

And all the more interesting to me, as its from my all-time favvy Robert Brault! Folks close to me woulda surely known how much I love and adore this guy! ;-)

Says it –

Enjoy the little things,

for one day you may look back

and realize they were the big things.

—ROBERT BRAULT

And this text to the epitaph is testament to the ‘tabby power’ that’s in store for the reader on a New Year’s day!

The first chapter starts on a surprising title, ‘650,000 Hours’

Over to the very first page of this francesc miralles read titled, love in lowercase for us all -

In no time at all the year was going to end and the new one was about to begin. Human inventions for selling calendars. After all, we’re the ones who’ve arbitrarily decided when the years, months, and even hours start.

We shape the world in our own measure, and that soothes us. Under the apparent chaos, maybe there really is order in the universe. However, it certainly won’t be our order.

I was putting a minibottle of cava and a dozen grapes on the table—one for each stroke of midnight, as is the custom in this country—and thinking about hours. I’d read somewhere that the battery of a human life runs down after 650,000 hours.

At thirty-seven, I could very well be halfway through.