A great message and beautiful style

I recieved this post recently. It is attributed to George Carlin, a comedian of the 70's and 80's. Read on.....

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways , but narrower viewpoints.
We spend more, but have less,
we buy more, but enjoy less.
We have bigger houses and smaller families,
more conveniences, but less time.

We have more degrees but less sense,
more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems,
more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly,
laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.
We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life.
We've added years to life not life to years.

We've been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We
conquered outer space but not inner space.
We've done larger things, but not better things

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.
We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice.
We write more, but learn less.
We plan more, but accomplish less.
We've learned to rush, but not to wait.

We build more computers to hold more information,
to produce more copies than ever,
but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion,
big men and small character,
steep profits and shallow relationships.

These are the days of two incomes but more divorce,
fancier houses, but broken homes.
These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers,
throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies,
and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill.

It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you,
and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete

Judith Viorst

I recently discovered the poems of Judith Viorst. The poems are soo simple yet eloquent, something like Dorothy Parker's and as much fun too. Read on I have posted two on my blog...

If I Were In Charge of the World

If I were in charge of the world
I'd cancel oatmeal,
Monday mornings,
Allergy shots, and also Sara Steinberg.

If I were in charge of the world
There'd be brighter nights lights,
Healthier hamsters, and
Basketball baskets forty eight inches lower.

If I were in charge of the world
You wouldn't have lonely.
You wouldn't have clean.
You wouldn't have bedtimes.
Or "Don't punch your sister."
You wouldn't even have sisters.

If I were in charge of the world
A chocolate sundae with whipped cream and nuts would be a vegetable
All 007 movies would be G,
And a person who sometimes forgot to brush,
And sometimes forgot to flush,
Would still be allowed to be
In charge of the world.

Happiness (Reconsidered)
Happiness
Is a clean bill of health from the doctor,
And the kids shouldn't move back home for
more than a year,
And not being audited, overdrawn, in Wilkes-Barre,
in a lawsuit or in traction.

Happiness
Is falling asleep without Valium,
And having two breasts to put in my brassiere,
And not (yet) needing to get my blood pressure lowered,
my eyelids raised or a second opinion.

And on Saturday nights
When my husband and I have rented
Something with Fred Astaire for the VCR,
And we're sitting around in our robes discussing,
The state of the world, back exercises, our Keoghs,
And whether to fix the transmission or buy a new car,
And we're eating a pint of rum-raisin ice cream
on the grounds that
Tomorrow we're starting a diet of fish, fruit and grain,
And my dad's in Miami dating a very nice widow,
And no one we love is in serious trouble or pain,
And our bringing-up-baby days are far behind us,
But our senior-citizen days have not begun,
It's not what I called happiness
When I was twenty-one,
But it's turning out to be
What happiness is.

Green is my garden

Green is in. Yet, it was not a color I ever thought about. Growing up, my childhood was surrounded by its verdant sheen. everyday my mom or maid would either be weeding, watering, pruning, sowing or stealing greens. The last was the maximum adventure in our staid city and the expeditions would be planned out.Earlier forays into the adjoining neighbourhood would have informed them of some beautiful plant that they could 'twitch'for their own and they would set out in the night armed with gardening scissors to filch cuttings.....asking might havde got the same results, but I guess they preffered the joy of taking rather than recieving; sometimes they would not have to work so hard for it and the plants would be lying discarded on the roads by their non-discerning owners.
Greens of various hues filled my house and my garden and the day we moved to a new neighborhood, we hired a truck for the plants alone, but many were still left behind.
Growing up in this haven of green, I never thought about them and was just content to sit back and soak in their beauty while the others cared for them. It all changed when I moved to Mumbai. Few people in this teeming metropolis own a patch of green and the balconies in all the appartments have been absorbed to increase carpet areas. Living space is at a premium and at times appartments with plants are targeted by neighbours who get drenched in non-seasonal downpours from watered plants. The lack of greenery made me pine(no pun intended) for the comforting color and made me realise it's luxury. No amount of house decor can add the same touch of comfort and beauty that one verdant, blooming pot of lush green can and for that I am all for green.
My daughter proudly claims the few plants that I manage to fit in a tiny corner as her 'garden' and even manages to muster excitement for the 3 pots that she wilfully weeds. The garden is tiny and the blooms are few but whatever there is, distracts the eye from the monotony of skyrises and for that beauty I am thankful.

Half-read, fully enjoyed

It's been a looong month, full of half read books. The problem of choice. I had such a lovely collection to read from that I just hopped and have been hopping since then...
The list was as follows:
1. Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh
2. 100 Selected Stories by O Henry
3. Selected writings on Delhi compiled by Khushwant Singh
4. The Portrait of a Lady (Collected Stories) by Khushwant Singh
5. Stranger to History by Aatish Taseer
6. A Little Princess by Frances H Burnett
7. Mister God, This is Anna by Fynn
Old favorites, childhood memories and new perspectives all bundled into one month…..now you comprehend?!
Lets start with the last one, the one that I am currently attached to.
Mister God, This is Anna first revealed itself to me in my lost teenaged youth, when I was looking for a book to gift a friend. My usual gifts were books, not only because my friends liked them but coz I could borrow them back….devious right;) So when decent time had passed (I have good manners), I borrowed it. To say that the book is phenomenal is an understatement- it reaches conclusions through such logical steps, that you are zapped. Anna is a five year old, who holds the answers of a millennium in her soul. To be absolutely truthful, I have never read the whole book. Every time I have picked it up- the beauty and truth of its ideas have made me stop and take stock, and then I find it again. This is the third time in the last 15 years that it has found me and this time I plan to read it all through.
Reading, A Little Princess, was like reliving my childhood……must have read this book in class 5 or 6, breezed through it again. The language is simple and reminiscent of a bygone era- charming and sweet. Thanks Sunita.
Stranger to History is good but have just read the first 150 odd pages. Will review it later.
The collected stories and writings were of familiar authors and were like a bowl of warm, comforting soup……reading them is a ritual that involves curling up on the bed and shutting the world out- spa treatment for a book lover.
Gang Leader for a Day is the amazing story of how Sudhir Venkatesh, a student of economics at the University of Chicago in 1989 joined a gang to study urban poverty in Chicago. The book offers a whole new perspective at the socio-economics that prevails in poor communities and how they use their bare minimum, sub-standard resources to work towards transforming their lives. The book is only painfully true at times but helps you look at the ‘poor ’ without pity but with understanding. The choices they make, may not always seem right to us, but they work for them and in the end that’s what matters.

a root canal

its a root canal!!
the medical accord was clear
my teeth are clearly not as good as they appear
the tools of piercing, filing and sawing were out
oh no... how do i deal with the medical clout.

inspired

Potholed roads and stiletto heels
Do not a pretty picture make
But when prettiness wins over practicality
I set off with gritted teeth and lipstick in place
To meet and impress
While the city dust cakes my Clinique
And corns grow over my soles
Aren’t we swishy in our printed dresses, hobos and heels
marching over undressed roads

A combo

Reading takes you places, but sometimes just to break away, you need another story before reality hits. I was reading Gao Xingjian's extremely unputdownable One Man's Bible and had to intersperse it with another wonderful book Penelope Lively's Making it Up. The first is powerful but it needed a dose of well-written make belive or I would have been besieged by harrowing dreams:(

One Man's Bible moves between the past and the present and recounts a life lived under suppression. It's powerful and at times disturbing plot takes the form of memories that relive a harrowing Communist past. The book describes how freedom got lost during the Cultural revolution in China. The horrifying incidents of how carelessly spoken words , long-forgotten actions by family members earned one the malodorous title of "having capitalistic tendencies;" punishments ranged from public humiliation, flogging and transported "reform-through-labor" camps. Thus, the search for freedom and the joy in the ordinary is the primary theme of the novel. A heavy read but something you will not wish to miss.
During the Cultural Revolution, people were "rebelling" whereas before that people were "making revolution." However, after the end of the Cultural Revolution, people avoided talking about rebelling, or simply forgot that part of history. Everyone has become a victim of that great catastrophe known as the Cultural Revolution and has forgotten that before disaster fell upon their own heads, they, too, were to some extent asssailants. The history of the Cultural Revolution is thus being continually revised.....

So you can understand why I needed a breather, and Making It Up provided just that. The book is based on an excellent premise- in the author's own words it is an 'anti-memoir'; it goes one step further in unravelling what-if. Penelope Lively has homed in upon the rocks, the rapids, the whirlpools (of her life) and has wriiten the alternative stories. It makes interesting reading, especially as the stories do not rely on her as the main voice. In the first story 'The Mozambique channel', the protagonist is a half-remembered nanny, Shirley and in another, she presents herself with a half-sister(Penelope was an only child). The writing is beautiful and soothing. The stories are delightful in themselves and get you thinking what-if? Plus, I found a beautiful one-liner that I would like to appropriate for myself:

I read myself into one preoccupation to another:)

The Empires of the Indus

Adventures are adrenalin driven quests that are best accomplished curled up on a comfortable chair in climate controlled environments. ....

While reading the Empires of the Indus, you will climb lofty terrains, discover amazing history, travel with smugglers and live beyond your imagination. Her book details the histories and present predicaments of such diverse bands of people like the Sheedis, the boat people of the Indus, the Kalash tribes of the mountains, Pashtun villagers- each a different entity yet bound by the same river.

Alice’s forays into the land of the Indus, reminded me of those beautifully informative travel documentaries by Michael Palin on the BBC which told of rich pasts, historical upheavals, distinctive tribal societies and present disasters. The 300 odd pages of the book cover a 2,000-mile journey and 5,000 years of history.

Alice Alibinia travelled unaccompanied, armed with only her knowledge of Urdu..... an amazing feat in a land which is largely driven by misplaced male maschismo and especially when the traveller doesn't look like a doughty, travel-hardened adventurer.

She forayed into territories where women need to be inconspicuous and burqa clad and even illegally crossed the borders to Afghanistan. Alice, re-trod the path of Alexander, walked through the valley of the destroyed Bamiyan buddhas, trusted natives who took her deep in territories and places where even locals refused to wander -- all in her quest for a river's history. But beyond great empire conquering histories what emerges is the plight of the river. The Indus, which was once mighty and turbulent and for whom hymns were written in the Rig Veda to placate its divine wrath has now been reduced to a tiny stream in many places. The rampant damming of the Indus has reduced the livelihood of many who relied on its bounties. The book reads like a ballad and a dirge, declaiming past glories and fearing future disasters, when the once mighty Indus will no longer be powerful and desert and doom will follow.

Her last paragraph sums her fears for the land that was once watered by this powerful river. She says:
…..The Atharva Veda calls the Indus saraansh: flowing for ever. One day, when there is nothing but dry river beds and dust, when this ancient name has been rendered obsolete, when the songs humans sing will be dirges of bitterness and regret. They will tell of how the Indus- which once ‘encircled Paradise’, bringing forth civilizations and species, languages and religions- was through mankind’s folly, entirely spent.

(hmmm...shades of Ozymandias)

My anytime pick-me-up

Okay....I'll come out clean, I have an eclectic taste (to be polite) in books. My favourites range from classics to the much maligned historical fiction.

The idea of reading history without going through yawning,erudite paragraphs always seemed a good choice to me and so I defend my love for the Georgette Heyers (they give a great sense of that period's elite, plus they were also the precursors of chic-lit:))and Désirée.

Désirée has all the ingredients of a pot-boiler ~ young love and betrayal, passion and heartbreak. What makes it stand out is the range of historical characters who come to life in this fictional space- Napoleon, Josephine, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (who was crowned the King of Sweden and Norway) and Napoleon’s dysfunctional family. The book recreates their illustrious lives and loves in a way that general history lessons don’t.

The book tells the story of Citizeness Bernadine Eugenie Désirée Clary; the daughter of a 'respecatable' silk merchant, the bethrothed of Napoleone Bonaparte and the wife of General Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte.

Désirée is naive and intuitive with a lay charm that endures. The best part is that you don’t need to lock yourself away to enjoy the book in seclusion- once you start it, it will totally cut you off from your daily grind. A must-have on rainy days.

Edit mad

Editing is work, but my problem is that I start treating it like an obsession. Once the editing projects start, I can't stop my overactive mind from editing everything- from news paper reports (they are pathetic examples of editing anyways) to forwards.
The joys of doing what u love:)

Reading Lolita In Tehran- One of my recent favs

The serendipitous joy of having an eclectic taste in books is that sometimes veritable gems pop out of books that seem ‘too academic’ at first glance. Reading Lolita in Tehran turned out to be the rarity in somber sounding titles.

The book not only talks of life in Iran but also showcases the immense talent of the writer, Azar Nafisi as a teacher and critic.

The book weaves a magnificient plot co-relating the disastrous changes in Iran to the fictions of Nabokov, Fitzgerald, Henry James and Jane Austen. These are the authors who Azar admires; she uses their fiction and their protagonists journeys to make sense of the distress and hopelessness she sees around herself. To be honest, my modernistic tastes of fast paced fiction, always made me avoid most of these authors except of course, Jane Austen and Fitzgerald. Azar Nafisi made me realize their importance.

Azar and her chosen students (all women) meet every Thusday at her home to discuss the books in secret as they are banned in Iran. This is their only time of respite from a strict regime, the only time they let their dreams and imagination spirit them away from a country marred by religous fervor and war.

Time and again Nafisi enumerates the significance of fiction in cultivating empathy and creating a magical and imaginative world that helps us live through our present dilemmas. For me, the most telling idea was iterated in the following lines, where she discusses Lolita’s case in the book by Nabokov:
Lolita belongs to a category of victims who have no defense and are never given a chance to articulate their own story. As such, she becomes a double victim: not only her life but her life story is taken from her. We told ourselves we were in that class to prevent ourselves from falling victim to this second crime.

Azar Nafisi's brilliant literary criticism made me read some of the classics mentioned in it ..........amazing!!

Ghostwriting is fun.....plus work. The worst part is not that your name is not on the book, but the lack of independance at times.
I have had clients who gave me a mere 10 words brief for a 500 page book and others who questioned each word. The fact that I managed to work out all of them satisfactorily (theirs and mine) felt great.
Every book poses questions on how to work out the details, but the point to remember while ghostwriting is that your name is not on the cover.....so it should not sound like you. To be able to do that while maintaining your love for the written word is essential.
There are thousands of articles on how to represent the client, to base the book on their thoughts and their style, yet the art of camouflaging your words and morphing their words into your paragraphs requires constant work and unflagging attention to detail.