Continuous reinvention of Self

Hi,

Last week, I had a hectic time on the Internet. I spent quite some time at the old boys' forum of my Alma mater, mediating an issue.

One of the old boys had started a company to help people communicate better. He had advertised in the forum, looking out for clients. One of the fellow members strongly objected his co. seeking clients from the forum. The member who objected believed that members of the forum would not need such help; his belief was all us are good communicators (both biz-speak and biz-write; my sincere apologies to George Orwell and "his" Big Brother). This triggered a series of thoughts from a lot of members, both for and against such an ad in the forum.

My thought went backwards to my student days. My school stressed the need to speak and write English, and also helped me improve those skills. But, honestly, I have not revisited the way I speak / write ever since I left school.

But, how many of us question ourselves on the way we speak / write, and improve? I frankly have not.

An open mind can always learn things, at any given point in time. A colleague of mine embraced role models like Shashi Tharoor & N.Ram and emulated their way of speaking. In the process, he improved his communication skills dramatically. He was in his late 30s when he did that.

True reinvention could be a painful exercise, for it makes us depart from the comforts of what we were always familiar with.

But, isn't there true fun in pursuing things that are new to us? Personally speaking, reinvention is the mom of learning and its sub-set comprises wonder-traits such as "being curious" and "willingness to experiment".

Vijay

The creator and the created

Hi,

Read some of Manoj Das' Oriya short stories (translated, of course) over the weekend. Almost each story had a strong East-Indian flavor. As I was reading through his works, I was surprised to know how an innocent piece of work can transcend regional borders.

I shared this thought with a friend. We could almost instantly compile a list of Indian works that we felt had transcended regional borders, and had managed to compete with localized contents. Our list had Hrishikesh Mukherjee's comedies, Munshi Premchand's works, V.C.Kandekar's tales and Siyaram Saran Gupt's classics. The common thread in their works appears to be:

1. Being inspired by something very basic and the ability to multiply the effect

2. Willingness to share the best with others, in a manner others can relate

3. Creating something that is better than one's self

The above traits appear to have helped the creators to manage decent commercial success as well.

But, assessing the life of Paul Gauguin or Van Gogh, the traits they possessed appear a bit twisted. They fare as under:

1. Being inspired by something basic, and stay inspired by it for its own sake. Remaining unaware of how much it has become a part of you.

2. Willingness to share the best with others, in a manner "suiting" the creators.

3. Creating something that is better than them.

This latter breed had lacked recognition and hence had little / no commercial success. This state of mind is best captured by Gauguin's following quote.

"I shut my eyes in order to see".

Alas! he could not make others see what he saw - at least during his lifetime.

Vijay

The book fair of Chennai

Hi,

Paid a visit to the 30th Book Fair in Chennai and was surprised to see the healthy turnout of visitors.

Some observations:

The average age of the buyers of books in the vernacular tongue was above 35 years.

However, young visitors (less than 25 years) were found flocking the stalls of vendors specializing in English books and CDs.

Books translated from other languages have thinned and the stalls vending such works lacked lustre. Experimental reading seems to be waning and readers seem to prefer treading on safer tracks, buying known authors.

Bottomline: I felt glad for both the sellers and the buyers. Reason: The former have started seeing book-selling as a profitable proposition while the latter for not having lost touch with one of the time-tested ways to expand minds. I envied the young visitors, as they have started brushing shoulders with literary figures, at a very early age.

I visited the fair with a list. When a returned home, I found I could do justice to the list. My list had Thirumandiram (Thirumoolar's epic), Manoj Das' short stories and a succinct English version of the holy Koran.

Vijay

Music for the soul

Hi,

Speech pathologists infer that pauses while speaking is dreaded, even by orators. Ancestral wisdom suggests "True words are never spoken". Corollary: Silence is golden.

I cannot agree more with these basic truths. Especially, when my friends complain about the deteriorating state of modern music.

After listening to music made in the 50s and that made now, I could sense a basic difference. That made in the 50s had a lot of pauses in it. The modern versions hardly pause in between. This could be a reason why music made in yester-years still lingers.

I also sensed, modern music made in the classical / country genre has retained the pauses and the interspersions of silence. This retention, I think, has helped this genre of music to achieve vintage status, despite being modern.

I was listening to a bunch of CDs laden with Carnatic music over this weekend. I was spellbound by the richness and finesse of what I heard. I observed the frequent, smart interspersions of silence as the music flowed.

Interestingly, as I heard more and more of these CDs, the silence between a track and the succeeding track was very pleasant. In fact, it was more pleasant than the music itself!

My learning: Silence is not only golden, but could also be the best music you ever heard!!

Thanks

Vijay