I try telling this story to people who say I’m expensive (I am not). When you spend over 20 years in the industry you tend to do things faster, and the years would have blessed you with the necessary powers of discrimination so you can deliver quality work. Not that I’m comparing myself to the genius, mind, I’m just illustrating a point. I tell the people who bargain with me that speed and quality have their price and that by hiring a senior person, they are actually spending less. The logic is simple: a senior guy can get the job done in less time than it takes a middle-weight or junior person. A junior professional may be cheaper but in the longer run, because of his or her inexperience, will extend the length of a project by making mistakes which will end up costing you more. So by paying a senior person seemingly more, you are actually spending less. But the logic falls on deaf ears. Every time. It's hard to fight with an Excel sheet.
There was a wealthy gentleman who wanted his portrait done by Picasso who was at the peak of his fame. Picasso agreed after discussing terms. He said he would charge a million dollars for the project and asked the gentleman to come to his studio on a certain date. On the appointed day, the gentleman comes to Picasso’s studio and after the initial pleasantries, he is asked to sit down on a chair. Picasso looks at the man for a few minutes, draws a few strokes with a couple of different brushes, adds a dash of colour, and says, ‘Done, there’s your portrait’. The man is aghast and angry. ‘I spend a million dollars for a portrait and you do that in five minutes? This is ridiculous.’ Picasso replies calmly, ‘Sir I may have taken only five minutes but I spent over 20 years learning how to do it in five minutes, the million dollars is not for the five minutes, but for the years I spent learning’.
I try telling this story to people who say I’m expensive (I am not). When you spend over 20 years in the industry you tend to do things faster, and the years would have blessed you with the necessary powers of discrimination so you can deliver quality work. Not that I’m comparing myself to the genius, mind, I’m just illustrating a point. I tell the people who bargain with me that speed and quality have their price and that by hiring a senior person, they are actually spending less. The logic is simple: a senior guy can get the job done in less time than it takes a middle-weight or junior person. A junior professional may be cheaper but in the longer run, because of his or her inexperience, will extend the length of a project by making mistakes which will end up costing you more. So by paying a senior person seemingly more, you are actually spending less. But the logic falls on deaf ears. Every time. It's hard to fight with an Excel sheet. There’s something humble, selfless, magnanimous even, in graffiti messages, you know the good ones scrawled on bathroom stalls and big city walls? Because a lot of them border on the brilliant and some are just pure gold. Curiously, none of them (like the proverbs ) boast authorship. No bylines, no ‘these lines brought to you by’, nothing. They are anonymous, often accurate, and absolutely mind blowing.
There was a guy named Nigel Rees, if I remember right, who went around collecting graffiti messages and published them in a series of short books. I picked them up at the roadside bookstalls that used to flourish near the Fountain, Mumbai. Lost them, bit still some of the lines are etched in my mind. Like the ones below: 1."I used to be a schizophrenic, we are ok now" 2."The meek shall inherit the earth, if it's ok by you" 3."Amnesia rules, O... (in the series of ‘graffiti rules OK?’) 4."I'd give my right arm to be ambidexterous" 5."Misspellers of the world, untie" 6. "God is dead" - Nietzshe. "Nietzsche is dead" -God 7. "To do is to be" - Socrates. "To be is to do" -Sartre. "Do be do be do" - Sinatra. 8."I didn't believe in reincarnation the last time either" 9."Progress has gone too far" 10.Dyslexia lures, K.O 11."Is anal retentive hyphenated?" 12. "I am not obsessive, I am not obsessive, I am not obsessive ..." There is a marked difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge goes to TED talks and other platforms to play to the gallery while wisdom retires to the caves, knowing there is not much point in trying to impress an audience whose attention can be distracted by the next celebrity wardrobe malfunction.
And few things encapsulate wisdom more powerfully than proverbs. Besides being timeless and pithy, they contain the experience of centuries gone by in those few short, succinct words. Wisdom and brevity, kind of go together it seems (which reminds me of what Hegarty, an adman, said about long copy. His point was if the French Revolution needed only three words, Liberte, Egalite and Fraternite, why do you need a thousand word copy to sell a detergent powder?). The curious thing about proverbs is that there are no bylines, no authorship, nothing. They are anonymous, accurate, and absolutely mind blowing. First some extremely colourful and rich proverbs I grew up listening to: 1."Like a house of ill repute that has witnesses the birth of a boy" When the light bulb reached its expiry end and was duller than a backbench student, our folks would say that (not within earshot of kids of course). I am not sure if any other expression comes close to convey the low wattage more accurately. (In case you are wondering: Because the birth of a boy is no cause for celebration, hence dull lights.) 2."Brothels when able-bodied, the Lord on deathbed" That's the rough translation. It means in the heady days of youth, power and virility, you waste it all on wanton pursuits, and cry for the lord when the effects of your playboy behaviour start to show in the twilight of your life. 3."Just because it's made of gold you can't prick your eyes with a golden pin" Preciousness has its limitations. 4."Like getting pregnant out of politeness" This applies to people are too nice and cannot say no even if the consequences are disastrous. I'll spare you the gory and gruesome details of ivory trade and elephant poaching across the globe. Instead I'll introduce to Peaches and how she can help you help the cause. That's Peaches. She is the baby elephant who plays the lead role in the Boogadooga Series of stories. She has two close friends, Alala the crow and Coco the monkey. Together they traipse through the magical Boogadooga jungle and learn useful life lessons that are relevant to kids these days. There are some other recurring characters in the series, like Basho the owl, the resident philosopher and problem solver who helps Peaches and her friends overcome whatever problems they are facing.
Peaches and her friends go to the Jungle Elementary School (the drawing teacher os is a toucan) where they learn what they feel like without the stress of competition. When they are free, which is most of the time, they go to the Jungle Juice Bar and have exotic fruits and fruit juices while exchanging tales of their wonderful lives in the forest. 'How does that help save the elephant?' you may ask. Well, 50% of the sales of the Boogadooga Series goes to saving these beautiful creatures. Currently there are two stories, The Lost Pencil where Peaches loses a pencil given to her by a girl, and The Expensive Brush where Coco learns the value of talent over tools. There are 10 stories in the series, which I will release over time. I spoke to a prominent wildlife saving organisation about using their logo for my proposal. While they appreciated my effort they said they couldn't let me use their logo on my site unless the amount donated was $10,000. Alternatively, they said they could send me a letter stating that I am donating half the proceeds to Save the Elephant project which I can post on the site to ease the doubting minds. I can get that letter after I send the donations from the first three months' sale. If you would like to help save the elephant, please purchase the ebooks which are $2.99 each. You can buy them off Amazon, B&N and Kobo or my site. You'll find the details here. Thank you. There, that was intentional, the typo. I've been learning a host of programming lessons on Udemy, a fantastic site for learning almost anything you want. I finished an excellent course on HTML & CSS, am halfway through a couple of Ruby courses ( I like the 'gems' bit, irrational, I know), a couple of Python courses, and a bunch of others I haven't gotten around to yet. Picked up a Python for kids book and trying to code like an eight year old.
Coding teaches you some important lessons though: 'close what you open' is one of them. The other being how something as lowly as a comma or a semicolon can mess up your result beyond recognition. In programming, everything is not just essential but critical. So never treat a comma with contempt for it can have you going through reams of code just to laugh at you villainously from its non-existent space. It is not for nothing that people have spoken in hushed tones about the wrath of a curly brace scorned. Treat every bit of code with respect. Just like in life. Never look down your nose on the tea lady for she knows what goes into your cup. There are life lessons everywhere as a matter of fact. For instance, swimming teaches you a crucial lesson: shut your mouth and keep your eyes open. And relax for heaven's sake. And float (or float left; to be more in tune with this post). There was a time when you said the above word when you doubted the veracity of the statement or question you were confronted with. That was before the Modern Family cast entered your living room and your pizza and beer laden brain. Nowadays, it could mean anything from, 'you are kidding me!', to 'No, you don't mean that', to 'Why is this happening to me?' to 'Oh, come on now' and a wide range of other emotions and expressions. I am not knocking a sitcom lingo wriggling its way into the everyday vocabulary of its audience, Seinfeld did it with 'yada, yada'. But that was a new word, wasn't it? Somehow, "seriously" doesn't have the same appeal. You just take an existing word and cram it with all kinds of meanings till dies a violent death, groaning under the weight of all the meanings it was not supposed to carry, probably blurting out weakly before breathing its last:' I couldn't take it. Seriously.' It's force-feeding, that's what it is, a foie gras (wtd?) of words. Interestingly, I've only observed the fairer sex displaying the symptoms of this, shall we say, 'seriousitis'? Hope it's a passing fad, in all seriousness. I purchased a kindle book the other day titled 'Dancing beyond thought'. It's a collection of verses from the Gita and the author's sincere belief is that one can take any of these verses and make chanting that a daily ritual. It's transliterated with English pronunciations along with the verses. Speaking of a verse that resonates, I always felt drawn to the instruction to 'do your duty without expecting results' (karmanye vadikharaste ...').
It allows you to focus your mind on what's at hand, not a distant victory whether it's the money that's going to be in your account or an award that you may or may not get someday. Since it un-clutters your mind, you can concentrate on the task at hand. It absolves you of the result, good or bad bestowing upon you a sense of peace and calm settle in you as you go about doing your duty, whatever that maybe. There's a similar story in a Zen koan. An impatient student keen on learning kendo, a Japanese martial art(way of the Sword), approaches the sensei and asks him to teach the art of kendo. The master says it will take ten years. The student, appalled, says, 'But master, I have to learn it in five years'. 'Oh?' says the master, 'in that case, it will take twenty years'. The lesson is: focus on what you have to do and the rest will take care of itself. In the case of the student, effort and single-minded attention would have ensured that he became adept at the art in ten years or less, but with his mind on the result, it was obviously going be delayed. The more impatient you are, the longer it will take. Which somehow ties back to Stephen King's 'writers write' piece of advice. It doesn't matter if your book is published or not; whether you have a million readers or five. All that matters is that you sit at the computer and write. Because, like he says: “Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.” It doesn't have to be stories all the time. You can take a break between your novels and story writing schedule by writing blogs. Even if you write a bestseller, what next? Are you going to stop? Is that the best you got, to quote Ali (apparently that was how he taunted his opponents in the ring)? Not all bestsellers are great. Again, going back to King, he hates Snowfall in the cedar type stories; Tom Robbins loathes 'Fifty shades of grey'. So to write a decent book, you have to keep writing, and if you make it to the bestseller list, great, but that's just the beginning. As they said when I was learning Aikido very briefly, 'a black belt is not the end, it's the beginning'. I almost always get drawn in by the first line of a book before buying it, and Marquez’ masterpiece was one such book I was lured into by the opening lines. There is something melancholic, beautiful, engaging, mysterious and irresistible about those first few lines. I had attempted reading him earlier, about ten years ago, but I landed on the wrong book, the Autumn of the Patriarch, which, if I remember right, did not have full stops for pages on end. All authors have their entry point books I think, (for instance, if you want to start off with Murakami don’t let Kafka on the Shore be your first as it was with me before I rediscovered him through Norwegian Woods)and luckily I revisited Marquez at Borders and got off to a wonderful journey that started with ten dollars. From then on I bought almost all his books and fell in love with his writing, even though he wrote in Spanish. That’s another inexplicable quality about his stories, you don’t feel like you are reading a translated piece of work, and the credit for that goes largely to Gregory Rabassa who erected a transparent (or diaphanous, as Marquez would have said) veil between the two languages to make sure you didn’t lose much in the process. And I learnt today that magical realism dies at age 87. RIP GGM. There will be one hundred years of platitude for your works, I'm sure.
All right, let's see how this works. After trying facebook ads, Adwords and Bing and dabbling with Goodreads, I just started a Pay with a tweet campaign today. You can download a sample of my short story collection Ten Twisted Tales to get an idea of what the stories are about, the style of writing, etc, and should you be so (hopefully) inclined to purchase, you can do so on this site. There are five stories in the PDF. You can click the link on the right or on the welcome page or the Ten Twisted Tales page. But now that you are here, why don't you click the button and help spread the word? Thank you.
Saw this in Japan Times last week, right after the Bridge defeat. And it is getting worse, fittingly. Ho hum.
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On Writing
This is about writing (mine and my favorite authors'), and e-publishing. Hope you find it useful. You can click on the covers below to read excerpts and purchase my ebooks. GuruSpent over two decades peddling assorted goods and services in the name of advertising. Now focusing on writing fiction for adults and children. And blogging. Archives
November 2023
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