The City of Joy

I had been to Calcutta to take the GRE. This was my second visit to the place. My stay was a short one. I decided to spend whatever time time i had in the streets of calcutta.

I have been to several big cities. But Cal is different. It shocking and even repelling..but intriguing too. The stinking dumps of waste in the heart of the city, the roads overflowing with traffic, the air polluted with vehicular pollution almost make you cringe. But I couldn't help but marvel at the sheer range of activities taking place around me. I found all kind of vehicles plying on the roads...luxury sedans, vintage models, buses, trucks, garbage carts, a sea of cabs and the veritable trademarks of the grand old city...the rickety trams and the hand-pulled rickshaws. Each square inch of the busy thoroughfares was utilised.

The footpaths, apparently, were home to myriad vocations. Make-shift ateries serving meals to people seated facing the walls present a unique sight. Assorted items are sold - starting from hairpins to electronic gadgets. I was walking down one such footpath, on my way to college street, with a hung head (you have to look down lest you fall pray to one of the countless knolls and dells). When I looked up, I was stratled to see a man flashing a wide grin at me. But as I found out to my fascination, he was having his teeth polished. The enterprising individuals offering the service were also skilled at cleaning ears and picking lice, as I discovered a few yards ahead.

As most people know, College Street is a treasure trove of books - particularly used ones. I stopped at one shop and strated browsing the books assuming that the shopkeeper wouldn't know about the ones I was looking for. But as I was clearly not making any headway, the guy smiled and asked me what was I looking for. I mentioned a few authors and titles, almost expecting a frown from him. But to my utter surprise he got me a dozen books in a jiffy. Seraching for Kafka, Camus, Vonnegut, Marquez, Keneally, Steinbeck...? Looking for obscure titles? You mention them and chances are they will get you the books.
As I prepared to board a cab to the station, I couldn't help have more than just a fleeting glace at the Indian Coffee House - supposedly the cradle of intellect that the city's congoscenti frequent.

I still don't know whether I love or hate calcutta, but the city of contradictions certainly put me under a spell.

How Kavya got charmed, got wooly and got the boos

Kavya Viswanathan's seems to be a plain case of a plagiarist trying to strike it big. But there is more than meets a wary eye.

Book writing and publishing, apart from being an exercise in creativity and intellect, is also a lucrative business proposition. Like any other business proposition in America, it has been put through the scanner by scores of entrepreneurs to look for hidden udders that can deliver the ever elusive extra moolah. As an innovative result of these efforts, a third layer (apart from writers and publishers) has taken birth, got organized and mature. This layer is the interface (read middlemen) between the writers and publishers. These agents get the material mostly from relatively unknown, first-time writers. If they find some promising stuff (read potential money-spinner) they turn it over to the publishers. All for a fee of course.

The system works fine unless some smartass editor employed by an interface company decides to over-exert herself, as happened in Kavya's case. The same interface firm that Kavya employed had also reprented the author who was the victim of the plagiarism effort. The coincidence doesn't stop here. The same person edited both the books. The rest can be read between the lines.

Can you blame a starry eyed youngster if her editor borrows some passage from the works of an obscure author that she happened to edit before? But it seems there aren't enough admirers of dusky beauties in the land of whites. Enquiries started, a media churning followed and Kavya got damned. Irrespective of the book's worth, as a result of this "unintentional internalisation" Kavya can at least be credited for one of the most creative euphemisms in the English language.

Rights Reserved

It is obscene for any student not to have an opinion on caste-based reservations. Here are my two cents. While it is very convinient to condemn reservations in any form, its apt, perhaps, to consider the issue in equanimity. The current system is flawed but the concept of providing some rational support to the disadvantaged sections of the society is not.

There are several communities in the country who have been buried in ignorance and diffidence owing to years of isolation or oppression or geographically skewed development or a combination of these factors. These people need to be supported to compete with their more privileged counterparts so that more hands will come forward to strengthen the force of progress. Having said that, I must add that this support must be in a proper form and must be well-directed. This is obviously the most important part of the scheme that our politicians gloss over. Hence the resentment and the protests.

A large chunk of the seats in the reserved catagory in educational institutions and in jobs remain unutilised. Decades after the reservations were introduced we still need them. While these factors point to thefailure of the present system of reservations, they also buttress the fact that these people are indeed disadvantaged. A more rational support model for these people needs to be developed.

One such model was suggested by two social scientists recently. They proposed, to put it in a nut-shell, to compute a competency figure for each candidate. It will have 80% contribution of merit and the rest 20% will comprise of various disadvantage factors like caste, gender, economic status etc. This will ensure implicit support for the needy while ensuring optimum utilisation of available seats or jobs. The implementaion of such a model appears difficult but the details can certainly be worked out if the best brains in the country deliberate on it. But since here the support is implicit, it will certainly be short of brownie points that act as the opiate for the political parties.

The reservation bill is ready for introduction. If the politicians succeed in their machinations, which the self-styled Nehruvian Samaritans most certainly will, the obituaries to meritocracy will officially be written. I believe the only people who can possibly provide the last ray of hope are the corporate India. Even as the anti-reservation protests keep on intensifying, if the bigwigs of indian industry come together and prepare a concrete plan for robust basic education throughout the country, complete with the budget estimate (of which they must be prepared to contribute a major chunk) and implementaion details, we would at least have the satisfaction of putting in our best effort.