How Newspapers are Just Like You and I

I don't know how many of you still read newspapers, not the online version but the broad sheet. But I’m still a newspaper fan. The relationship started when I was probably in sixth or seventh standard in school – and it continues to this day.

Staying in three states of India (or two states and a union territory, Delhi), I have been exposed to various English dailies at various times. I read the Statesman and the Telegraph in Calcutta; the Hindustan Times and the Times of India in Delhi; again the Times of India, the Deccan Herald, the Hindu and occasionally The Indian Express in Bangalore.


What I have always found interesting is that no two newspapers are same in character and personality. In fact, they are as different as two people and as human as they are. Their personality traits are based on use of language, style of reporting and their chief editors’ personalities.


The Statesman, whose market is mainly limited to Calcutta, for example, is like a retired man from an old-world British firm for whom an inaccurate English pronunciation is the most inexcusable form of sacrilege. Another Calcutta paper, the Telegraph, on the other hand, is like an above-40-youthful uncle who has a regard for the status quo but is also reluctant to be out of step with changing times.


Calcutta market is now flooded with other newspapers, but around 20 or so years back there weren’t more than two to three major English dailies. The Statesman had a prominent presence until Ananda Bazar, a leading Bengali daily, launched its English avatar, The the Telegraph, in the early 90s, and it became an instant hit with the young, with whom Statesman hadn’t cut the ice.


The post-90s’ ‘liberalized Calcutta newspaper market’ introduced me to the Hindustan Times, and the paper instantly scored my loyalty. It had fewer pages than the Telegraph, so you could run through it sooner. Its language was friendlier (or according to Statesman types, pedestrian) than theTelegraph and the other dailies. And it had Vir Sanghvi’s (its chief editor) Counterpoint (which ran into controversy few months back). Vir also started a food column in Brunch, an HT lifestyle Sunday magazine - Rude Food - during the time and it became an instant hit; he still writes the column.


Hindustan Times, for me, was just like Vir: easy going, unpretentious and friendly. The paper also introduced me to the columns of Khushwant Singh, whose works (short stories and essays) I later read extensively.


I continued reading the Hindustan Times when I moved to Delhi for work but also took up the Times of India. However, after coming to Bangalore, I broke up with the HT as it isn’t available here, but stuck to the TOI, which is among the leading English dailies in Bangalore.


The TOI was among the first newspapers to introduce the concept of ‘news you can use’. It dedicates a shelf of pages everyday to classified advertisements and carries news items that keep its readers informed about things that directly affect their lives, like board exam results, call center numbers for government services etc.


It runs innovative public-interest initiatives and when required, it vehemently criticizes the powers that be. In short, the TOI is everything that a corporate boss wants a worker to be: efficient, innovative, interactive and utilitarian. Additionally, it’s also chaotic and raucous. Or vibrant, depending on how you want to put it.


The Hindu, whose market is mostly in south India, is the opposite. It’s staid, sober, deep and analytical. And some would also say, humourless. It’s not speculative and colourful like TOI; it’s restraint, scholarly, idealistic and also Leftist. It’s a mirror image of its editor in chief, N Ram. In his autobiography, Nehru had written about the Hindu’s sobriety and its propensity to stay away controversies. Like the Hindustan Times inroduced me to Khushwant Singh, in the Hindu I read Shashi Tharoor for the first time.

 The Deccan Herald is somewhere between the TOI and the Hindu. It mixes serious reporting with a pinch of frivolity (you will get street side food and Bollywood gossip) and presents the right balance. It also gives generous doses of literature through book reviews and pieces on literary trends and interviews. It wants to keep everyone happy.

Reading newspapers is no different from knowing people. If I had been writing about friends and colleagues, it wouldn’t be very different from this.

Landlord Mystery Busted

                                                                                  

This month, when I called up the landlord to check when and where he would meet me for rent, he as usual didn’t pick up the call. He called me up next morning and said he was half an hour away from where he would like to meet me. Having learnt my lessons and grown wiser, this time, I told him to call me upon reaching the spot and I would be there within 10 minutes. He never called up. Next morning, he again called me and said I would receive a call once he was at the place of meeting. But he didn’t call.


That day in the evening, I SMSed him asking for his account number so that I could transfer the rent online, sparing myself the ordeal of having to go through so much. He didn’t respond to the SMS.

This reluctance to receive money was something new. Earlier, although he used to keep me waiting, he answered phone calls and turned up for the rent. I knew he needed the money. What then was stopping him from coming?

I told my neighbour about the whole rent episode. He said the ownership of the house has changed and the current owner is the jeweller, whose jewellry shop is below my room on the ground floor. The neighbour, who is on good terms with the jeweller, said he would talk to the jeweler and get back to me on this.

Being a gentleman, if the neighbour told so much then there must be an iota of truth, I thought. But I wasn’t comfortable with him talking to the jeweller on my behalf, although I was reluctant to talk to the jeweller myself. If the house was the jeweller’s property, then it’s for him to approach me for rent, I reasoned.

All this happened over a weekend and once the following week started, I stopped being so concerned, but not for long. On Tuesday night, I found an SMS from the landlord asking me to call him up the next day. I decided as long as I wasn’t sure that he was the continuing owner of the building, I wouldn’t give him the rent. And the landlord would never reveal the true story. He had told me earlier about a possible sale of his property but hadn’t told it was the building in question.

I also reasoned that while both the landlord and the jeweller were crooks, the jeweller was the better of the two in that he was visible staying in the same building and unlike the landlord, I at least don’t know him to run away from anyone. Additionally, he is also financially healthier than the landlord, so I would be happier with him taking responsibility of returning my security deposit, a tidy sum. I made up my mind to talk to the jeweller next morning.

He said what my friend had predicted sometime back. The landlord had borrowed money from a bank mortgaging the house papers. When the landlord defaulted on the payment, the bank decided to auction the house. Upon coming to know that the house was going under the hammer, the jeweller together with a builder friend of his went and paid 10 lakhs to the bank to stop them from auctioning the property. Couple of weeks later, he garnered some more money and paid another 30 lakhs to the bank. The worth of the house has been assessed to be 1.5 crore. And that leaves 75 lakhs more for the jeweller to pay the bank.

I understood this development had been unfolding over quite sometime and the landlord had kept me in the dark. I asked the jeweller about who should I pay the rent to. He said to him.

I went back to my room and phoned the landlord to tell him the jeweller’s version of the story and informed him that I wouldn’t give him the rent this month onwards. I had expected some resistance from him, but I was in for a surprise. After hearing me out, he submissively said, “Oh, ok, no problem.” And I cut the call.

The submission confirmed the jeweller’s version.

So, according to me, this is how it stands. The building’s official owner is still the old landlord, but the ownership is disputed as the property has been forfeited by the bank. When the jeweller pays the remaining part of property worth, the ownership will go to him. A property dispute lawyer will be able to deduce it better.

Perils of Homecoming

Yesterday, I was reflecting that the road that takes people away from their hometowns and countries in search of better career opportunities is a one-way path that seldom returns home, and even if it does, it’s not usually a happy homecoming.


A distant uncle of mine who spent a considerable time in the US, initially as a student and then worker, had a tough time when he returned to India.

For a decade or so, he hopped from one job to another and then gave up on jobs and started his business which didn’t work either. Unable to adjust with professional disappointments, he became bitterly dismissive of India and everything Indian. Few years back, he returned to the US for good.

A friend, who had gone to Mumbai for jobs after his MBA, said the other day that he dropped his plan to return to Calcutta (his hometown) last year as his search for jobs in Calcutta turned futile with either unsatisfactory roles or salaries way lower than his current pay being offered to him.

But generally people want to return home even if it means a compromise in salary and position. What they remain cynical about, however, is whether they would be able to adjust to another work culture, especially one where the job market is not very good. Job markets shape workers’ attitudes towards their work and coworkers. You find politics and groupism everywhere, but they are more active in ailing economies where there are fewer jobs to around. An acquaintance who had a decent job in Kerela (a not so good job market and Leftist bastion) left it suddenly one day fed up of office politics.

Companies, in weaker markets, are also slow in taking decisions. Two months ago, I went through a selection process for a Calcutta position and cleared it. They said they would roll out the offer in a week or two but kept delaying it under some pretext or the other. Finally, I was dropped – and I still don’t know why. (I have written a mail to their HR detailing the experience I was put through, and will publish it in this blog after sometime.)

Partly, people migrating from advanced economies are also to blame - they suffer from a superiority complex which makes them reluctant to adjust. My US uncle’s pet complaint through his years in India was, “Everything is wrong with this country.” Nowadays, I find myself feeling guilty of taking similar gloomy views of everything about Calcutta. My friends snub me for doing so and immediately leap to the defense of the city.

Calcutta was among the strongest economies in the country until it started sliding back with the coming of Leftists to power in 1977 (a year after I was born). People, however, are expecting it to change in a year or two with assembly elections couple of months away and a non-Left party expected to dislodge the Leftist government that’s responsible for this economic stalemate. Bengalis staying outside Bengal and wanting to return home have their eyes set on this election.

So will a political change, if that’s followed by economic betterment, bring about change in work culture in Calcutta? I am keeping my fingers crossed.

How Facebook, Twitter and their Likes are Changing the World

Each time I read about the revolts breaking out in various parts of Arab and the details of how the protesters are organizing them, one question crosses my mind: Would it be possible in pre-social-media era? Facebook, Twitter and blogs are as much to thank for the success and spread of the revolutions as the people who are revolting.


For example, Egyptian protesters not just took inspiration from their Tunisian counterparts (where the protests broke out first) but also the know-how of how to organize and carry out successful protests. The Time has reported a Tunisian blogger as writing how a protester can stay safe and agile by wearing comfortable clothes and the importance of carrying water to protest venues. “Don’t discuss your strategy with just anyone you meet at protest site because it could be a security person in plain clothes,” the blogger warns.

It explains why the Internet becomes the first casualty when nervous governments want to stifle freedom of speech. The Internet gives people access to informal media (or social media) – Facebook, Twitter and blogs etc – empowering them to express their views in as-is form. This democratic character of informal media makes it more worrisome for repressive governments than conventional media which being organized are easy to control and suppress.

An Egyptian, a Google employee, set up a subversive group on Facebook and was jailed by authorities, and tortured. After the authorities freed him under public pressure, he went to Tahrir Square and gave a speech describing how he was tortured while in jail. Next day, the Egyptians who were part of his Facebook group went to Tahrir Square to join him, triggering protests that would eventually force Mubarak to step down.

History may have instances where a person singularly kicked off mass protests, but what is unlikely to have precedence is a popular protest in one country beginning a chain of revolutions in several countries, leaving regimes toppled and fates of nations reshaped in its trail. And no one knows where it will stop. That’s the power of social media.

                           A Scandalous Literary Work

Currently I am reading a book that many will recoil at – Lady Chatterley’s Lover – by D.H Lawrence. The book was published in 1928 and had created a furore in England and America because of its controversial storyline which is about extramarital affairs with graphic details of sexual intimacies.

Chatterleys are an unhappy couple. An accident has left Mr. Chatterley physically challenged and unable to perform conjugal duties. He also is indifferent towards his wife and encourages her to have a chequred relationship with someone so that Mr. Chatterley can get an heir to his immense wealth. Lonely and unloved, Mrs. Chatterley embarks on an affair with her husband’s gamekeeper, a caretaker.

The story gives you the glimpses of old English society, very lopsided and snob, and shows how the upper classes were indifferent to the plight of the ones below them. The Chatterleys have collieries and stay in a mansion, a world completely insulated from the lives of those working in their mines.

Lawrence had to have the manuscript typed by an Italian because several decent-minded English-knowing typists had refused to type it earlier due to heavy use of sexual expletives in the book. Upon its publication in the US, the book was banned. The ban spawned pirated copies which sold very well. It was DH Lawrence's last novel.

Career? What Career?

Today an old friend/colleague called up to say he has got a job in Calcutta, his hometown, which would pay him more than what he is making right now. (I was happy as well as surprised because Calcutta doen't have a great job market.)


Meanwhile, his current employers are trying to delicately dissuade him from leaving them. Even after he resigned, they put him on a career training programme which will cost the company a tidy sum. They have also promised to move him to their Calcutta branch.

Whether he should stay or go has left my friend a little indecisive. He has worked in his current company for almost four years, done well and been promoted. He is comfortable with his job and can continue for couple of years more and probably grow without too many challenges. But this comfortable environment mayn’t offer him much to learn.

Although the next company is smaller than his current one, the role would include some amount of learning. The role has some technical elements (my friend is a generalist) which the company would train him in. He would also get a few thousands more.

So should my friend stay or leave?

My friend’s problem is a typical mid-career problem where we struggle to balance mainly three concerns– money, career and skills. I am no management guru; still my thoughts may be worth reading.

The current company will help him have a comfortable job with a decent salary and some growth prospects. But his skills as a worker will remain the same. And few years on, with little bit of growth both in salary and position, he will either find himself in a project management or people management role. By the time he reaches there, he would be in his mid to late thirties with an over-bloated IT salary, minimal options outside his company and good 20 years of work life left before him.

But some would argue there is nothing wrong with this situation. It will make his career stable and he can also grow slowly. This simplistic approach misses more than it catches.

People who have stayed in companies for very long know staying doesn’t necessarily mean growing. Most stagnate, some grow, only to eventually stagnate. By the time they stagnate, their bloated salaries and high position minimize the availability of employment options in the market.
But, if a company is looking to cut cost, won’t old employees be at a lesser risk of job loss than the newer ones? How people in high-cost geographies lost jobs during recession, some of whom even after spending long years with their employers, blows this conventional theory to bits.

The reason why people like to spend long time in companies is that they place more importance on career than skills. What they forget is we don’t work for a vague indefinable thing like career but to meet immediate needs, ensure material prosperity and security. Of course, concern for career remains but it occupies a secondary position.

When you consider a new offer, first you look at two things: how the additional ten thousand (your increased salary will bring) will help you pay your car EMIs and whether you would be able to play the role comfortably. And then you look at how big the company is.

Your salary will help you meet your needs and your ability to perform your role will help you sustain the salary. The size of your company, on the other hand, will give you long-term stability which will help your career. But if the new role hadn’t fetched additional ten thousand or if you hadn’t been very confident of whether you would be able to perform the role, would you still join the company because of its size? No.

So skills are more important. They help you survive not just in one company but in any company. Regard for skills is where comes the willingness to acquire new skills and that keeps you mentally agile helping you to respond to varied situations and challenges either through use of existing skills or by acquiring new ones. And if you have the wit to survive, you will also find a way to grow.

Spending long time in companies has a merit, too. It exposes you to various challenges and it's by overcoming them that you can stay. So it's not necessary that if you stay in a  company for long, you don't learn. But you have to constatly remind yourself that just because  you have a comfortable job today, it doesn't mean tomorrow you will not need  to look for another one. And keep yourself ready for that.

A job that helps you get another job is a good job.

Will it Mean a Transformed Arab

I used to see the Arab world as a swathe of wealthy nations whose people are so content with their wealth that it didn’t matter to them that they were denied even most basic forms of freedom by their governments. No doubt I was ignorant, but many would share my views – until few weeks back.


First, Tunisia went up in flames and then the fire spread to other countries. What was most funny to see was how once the people took to streets, the dictators, who seldom showed any sign of weakness, started quaking. Following Ben Ali’s fleeing from Tunisia, the governments who would have otherwise considered it beneath them to give into people’s demands are ready to agree to anything to quell the fire of protests.

Media reports are attributing the eruption of protests mainly to two things: spike in food prices and absence of political freedom.

A strange part of the protests is that they are not anti-US despite the fact that the dictators are mostly US-backed. The US has many interests in Arab and it should make sure the popular uprising results in political freedom for the people; instead of one set of dictators replaced by another. The US’s fondness for dictators is one reason why democracy couldn’t flourish in Pakistan.

Will the outcome of the protests be a politically transformed Arab? I’m not sure but in the meantime, the protests will give China something to worry about unless they have already blocked the flow of news about the protests into the country.

Landlord on the Run

Earlier I had written at length about my landlord in this blog. He is acting stranger than before. Every month I meet him at a place to give my rent. When I went to the place last time, he appeared almost an hour late and said he had shifted to another place, quite afar, hence the delay. He looked distraught and from what he told me, he sounded like a man on the run.

I asked him why he wasn’t taking my calls and he said his phone was tapped. I was scared. Your phone can be tapped only by government investigating agencies. I asked him why and he said some people were “playing games” with him. “What kind of games and which people?” I asked. He has some real estate properties in Koramangla (Bangalore) and they were trying get them sold, he said. I couldn’t catch what was so wrong with it and how it justified his phone being tapped, but I remained silent.

He accused Jugrajji, who owns a jewelry shop under our building, of being behind everything. It was strange that Jugraj would try to trouble him; only couple of weeks back I had seen the two talk heartily. They were friends.

Jugraj and his friendship had always looked weird to me. They came from completely different backgrounds; Jugraj from a village in Rajasthan who wants to make it in Bangalore; the landlord from a wealthy family with a brother who is a doctor established in England with a Dutch wife.

On my way back home, I summed up what the landlord said and reached my conclusions. The phone-tapping thing was rubbish. I don't think he would be involved in something so serious that his phone would be tapped. But who he was trying to avoid by shifting to another place?

Today (31st Jan), when I met him to give my rent, it became clear who he was trying to avoid.

Having waited for an hour last time, this time I wanted to make sure that I didn’t find myself waiting again. I called him up and asked him to reach the spot and call me; it would not take me too long to walk to the location.

He called me and asked me to come to another place, not where we used to met for rent until last time. When I reached the place, he wasn’t there. I called him; he didn’t take the call. Fed up, when I started walking back home, my phone rang: it was the landlord.

He wanted me to come to another place to meet him. I wanted to snap but held myself back; after all it’s only once in a month, I thought.

When I reached the new spot, I didn’t find him. I called him but he refused to take the call. When I angrily started walking away, my phone buzzed. “I’m here,” he said. I turned back and found him bending and seeing me avoiding a low-hanging branch.

I walked to him and asked, “Why don’t you take your calls?” “If I take calls it becomes easy to spot where I am,” he replied. “Easy for whom,” I pursued; I deserved an answer, I thought. “That guy – Jugraj,” came the reply.

I was correct that no one was tapping his phone. The landlord has a Blackberry and so does Jugraj (at least he carries something that resembles a Blackberry) and there is an app (could someone tell the name, please?) which helps you detect the location of another person having a Blackberry. A shred of doubt lingers. I don’t think Jugraj, who is scantily literate, is tech smart enough to use the app.

Why the landlord is running away from Jugraj as if the latter has contracted a communicable disease? Probably the months to come will reveal.

Last time, when I had written about how Jugraj was pilfering power from me causing my electricity bill to shoot up, Elen had commented that I should find myself another accommodation. While coming back home today, I thought the same.

Masque of Africa - A difficult Act to Pull Off

Have you heard of a travelogue about old beliefs, myths and rituals of a place? That’s what Masque of Africa by VS Naipaul is all about. The book excludes (or includes very briefly) everything that a reader interested in Africa would like to know, like its current economic prosperity, its effects and politics. The Masque of Africa is about how the continent’s medieval beliefs and practices have survived the wave of modernity in Africa.

Naipaul focuses on economic development in Africa only to the extent of pointing out the lack of it, eloquently describing impoverished children devoid, as he argues, of any future, lack of hygiene, bad roads etc.

But frankly, despite these deficiencies the book works. The book is well researched and presents a lot of information that, however repulsive, will hold the reader. We all know Africa is a land of strange practices but we didn’t know how strange they could be. Some eating habits – like cat and bat meat – and rituals are really strange. In South Africa, a cruel ritual performed in the streets takes Naipaul aback challenging his belief that liberation would have softened a people.

The book does not completely steer clear of worldly pursuits like politics and history. It documents the history of many places; one of them is the anti-apartheid movement. Naipaul also presents an interesting biographical piece on Gandhi.

This was my second Naipaul travel book. After reading his Million Mutinies Now, I had been looking forward to the arrival of this book. I’m not fully satisfied, nor does it compare favorably with his Million Mutinies Now. But to hold your reader with a topic as staid as African belief is a feat not many can achieve.