Change, change, change.

The more I think about it, the more amazing I find it. I must have been born under a forward-looking star that ordained that I would see so much change and so much history in the making in a single lifetime. http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2007/04/pain-and-suffering.html. For instance, as a child, I saw MK Gandhi at fairly close quarters at one of his prayer meetings in Mahabaleshwar. I wrote about it in my still unpublished novel http://www.addgandhi.com/original/ on Gandhi and Hollywood, The Last Gandhi Movie. A few years later, I listened to Nehru’s famous eulogy at his funeral (“the light has gone out of our lives”) on our 5-valvr Bush radio. http://www.eulogywriters.com/ghandi.htm. So even if I rank among the lesser mortals who do not make history, I have been a mute witness to history in the making. Some of the late 20th landmarks I watched at more than six degrees of separation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation were Nehru’s death, the infamous Emergency interlude, Operation Bluestar and its aftermath, to mention the most noteworthy. I witnessed India’s progression from a colony to a state capitalist economy to a free economy. I saw at least one hack Victoria driver being butchered from my third floor terrace at 233 Khetwadi Main Road http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/07/morgue.html in the 1946-47 riots as well as Muslim houses behind as well from across my present residence in old Thakurdwar being put to flame in the 1992-93 massacre following Babri Masjid’s demolition. Apart from these, I saw my own family graduate from the coal choolah and the kerosene stove to bottled cooking gas and from the coal-fired water heater to electric heater. http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/06/heat-of-days-long-past.html. I saw the valve radio making way for the transistor powered one. http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2007/03/clueless-in-mumbai.html. I saw my portable typewriter making way for the PC in a span of forty years. http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/06/my-portable-typewriter-tale.html. And, I also saw myself graduating from the milk in a bottle and later in a plastic bag that needs boiling every morning http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/06/neo-luddite-relents-sheepishly-shame.html to the milk in a carton that needs no boiling at all. The Internet, e-mail, IM. SMS, Wen 2.0, cellular phones, CDs, DVDs, the likelihood of the end of the civilisation as we know it and of the institution of marriage … good grief, Charlie Brown, where are we headed?

Undo. Way to go.

Why is a PC more user-friendly than everyday living? Because it gives us the Undo option. Were such an option there in life, we could well have used it to undo the colonial institutions and the colonial attitude that dog us. (Mark Tully found them persistent in India on his return after a gap of twenty odd years.) It is these, rather than corruption, that goad the Indian elite to ignore, if not to downright despise, the poor and the destitute amongst us. (This is what he's hinting at in his The Defeat of A Congressman [Introduction].) Else, how can we account for the indignities that are the everyday lot of the terminally deprived in this secular democratic republic?

Take a break.

Gimme a break, pleads the tv host as the channel goes for a commercial break. Gladly, says the couch potato as she lets her fingers do the channel surfing. Come to think of it, a break is not such a bad thing after all. Especially if you want to steer clear of Occupational Overuse Syndrome (OOS) or Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). Very painful and debilitating if not treated early on, OOS/RSI is the lot of PC users who refuse to take a break, I'm told. At http://www.cheqsoft.com/break.html, there's Break Reminder, a software free to install for personal use. Its job? To remind you to take timely breaks, including micro pauses, from your PC. Take a look. And, take a break now and then.

My portable typewriter tale.

There’s a story, apocryphal perhaps, about Woody Allen’s technophobia. Every time he needs to change his typewriter ribbon, a friend gets invited to a home-cooked dinner. (Read ‘printer cartridge’ just in case he has switched to a PC by the time you read this.) True or not, it goes well with Woody’s screen persona. I used to think of myself as a technophobe till the time I got myself a portable typewriter, back in 1958, to pound my M.Com. thesis on. (I never admitted even to myself that my handwriting was atrocious and illegible.) My new acquisition was a made-in-India machine. I forked out the princely sum of Rs.1500/- for it. My dissertation ran into some 700 and odd pages. After reading it, my external assessor, Dr. K. N. Raj, told me that had I waited one more year I could have got a Ph.D. for my trouble. That’s not apocryphal, trust me. http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/09/almost-ph-d-me-who-else.html. Technophobe and techno-illiterate – I’ve continued to be both most of my life. I gave up driving long back because I was terrible at it, even worse at parking. When the PC came along though, I was among the early majority in getting converted by around 1995. I even managed to write a part of my still unpublished novel directly on my PC. I’m okay with surfing, e-mail and word processing but haven’t yet ventured into spread sheets. A part of the reason is I don’t really need to use Excel. This memory segment is brought to you by courtesy of Mr Gerry McGovern in whose article (Metadata is essential web writing skill.) I came across the Woody Allen anecdote which I had read before. “Metadata is the: who, what, where, when and how, of your content. … (and) may include: heading/title, summary/description, author name, date of publication, geographic classification, subject classification, keywords,” explains Gerry. The core of his argument is: “Metadata gives your content context.” Part 1 of the article at
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2003/nt_2003_06_02_metadata_1.htm. Part 2: http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2003/nt_2003_06_09_metadata_2.htm.

Here comes the spleen. (Sing it to the tune of ‘Here comes the bride’. Once more with feeling.)

This specimen (from the twenty-fifth issue of QuiteATake.com) comes from my own Archives. (The Hindustan Times Archives do not go back beyond 01 August 2004.)

> Quoting verbatim an unsigned hate E-mail I received is an apt way to open the twenty-fifth issue of QuiteATake.com. …

"Sub: Naipaul

Naipaul is a not a sourpuss, and unlike you is a well respected man of considerable talent and sharp intellect.
I bet you have not read some, let alone most of his work, yet in order to improve you (sic!) Indian version of secular credential, really a well established Nehruvian type of muslim appeasement, you feel that you have to slight this man. Pathetic hindu wimp forever subserviant to islamists!"

I wonder what the Nobel laureate would make of it. Either this fan of his has given up on English spellings or his ability to spell has given up on his mind so full of hate and venom.

Anyone wishing to answer him may apply to me for his E-mail address.

In the meanwhile, my PC's spellchecker has put the whole thing in proper perspective. Helpfully, it offered "muslin" as an alternative to "muslim" sans capital "m"; "hind" for ditto "hindu"; the correct spelling of the Frenchified "subserviant"; and "psalmists", "alarmists" and "Islamite" in lieu of "islamists." It made no comment on the "you" used in place of the intended "your," though. (The "sic!" is mine own.) And, it even offered to change "Frenchified" into "French-fried," the joker!

[P.S.: One of the joker’s contributions I forgot to mention was “Peruvian” instead of ”Nehruvian”.]

The piece that drew the hate mail-writer’s ire was two issues earlier. It read:

> If passport denotes nationality, Naipaul is an "intellectually and culturally bankrupt" Briton or Britisher if you'd rather I use a word the British shun.

He's certainly not one of us "unwashed" Indians, thank our lucky stars, nor an "unlearned" Trinidadian. An Oxford don who later confessed to having wasted his youth at "a very second rate provincial university," Naipaul is a sourpuss with a disposition to match.

Or else why would he perpetually view the world through jaundiced eyes?No, my bone of contention is neither An Area of Darkness nor India: A Wounded Civilisation. I found both these uncompromisingly truthful and brilliant.

It's simply that, Nobel laureate or not, the man comes across as an insufferable boor.

Give me, instead, the Royal Canadian Air Farce anytime. http://www.airfarce.com/.

In retrospect, though, I feel I wrote too harshly and unfeelingly about Sir Vidiadhar. After all, he has the right to feel and write any way he wishes. Sorry for the lapse, Sir Vidia.