MAN BOOKER PRIZE

From  next year Man Booker’s Prize will change. It will no longer be an exlcusive domain of Common Wealth writers. From 2014 onwards the Prize will be open to entries from all over the world. As of now, writers who write in English and whose work has been published UK are eligible for the award.

The ostensible  logic of the move is to universalize literature. To bring writers from diverse regions on a common platform to compete. This move will change the face of prize for ever.

Uptill now, the award was a  great platform for non-English speaking population, specifically Asian and African writers from the Commonwealth region. The award had a great aspirational value for Commonwealth writers. It promoted talent, and gave a fillip to fiction writing. Indians benefitted a lot from the award. Salman Rushdie, Kiran Desai and Arunadhati Roy rose to prominence with their work being anointed by the award.

Now things are going to change. Commonwealth writers will face tough competition from transnational writers. This may raise their bar, it might also swamp them out.

The fine print of the decision points to the growing unease of publishing houses whose domain is being encroached by technology firms like Amazon, Apple and Google. They have brought out e-reading devices like Kindle and ipad . Internet has democratized publishing. Books are more and more being made and released online. This move from the print to the digital has seen a rapid decline in the number of publishing establishments. Publishing industry itself is witnessing mergers and takeovers.  Clearly, the publishing proprietors are facing the music. One wonders if the recent change in rules of game of the Man Booker is the result of a  lobbied effort by this beleaguered publishing group.

 

MALALA - the girl story

It’s almost a year now. On  October 9, 2012, a young girl was returning home from school on an open -back truck. The truck was waylaid by a group of armed men. They asked the name of each of the child, and finally zeroed on a teenage girl. They put a gun barrel on her forehead and ran a bullet through her head. The girl was Malala Yousafzai. Armed hotheads were Taliban extremists. Location was Mingon town of Swat district. Country – Pakistan.

The cause of her being shot was a trifle matter for a death sentence. Malala had raised objection against Taliban’s diktat  preventing girls from going to school.

Malala survived the attack. She along with her family is living in Britain. Despite the attack, Malala had stuck to her position. She continues to oppose the Talibani fatwa, and  continues to champion the cause of girlchild education. 

Malala has now spoken about her wish to become a politician to fight for  girlchild rights, among other things.

Rise of Malala as a child activist is an interesting story. The forces which chiseled Malala’s character and convictions lay around her while she grew up in backwaters of Pakistan. The very fact that a  teenage girl from an underdeveloped region  should have such sharpened insight and worldview points to moulding forces alive in her neighbourhood. 

What were her influences ? Her schoolteachers and fellow schoolfriends, her parents and relatives.

Obviously, subjugation of the girlchild must have been a potent emotion among her influences. Among her school friends and teachers, the feeling about treatment meted out to the girlchild must have been very strong. They couldn’t vent those feelings. Malala had the opportunity and zing to take Taliban front-on.

The backstory of Malala points definitively to one fact. Modern day repressive societies have a strong undercurrent of revolt. The young of the society primarily nurse this sense of revolt and angst. Even if revolt doen’t come from the young, it is fuelled by youth-power. Arab Spring revolt is a case in the point.

It was well that Malala was not given the Nobel Peace Prize. To have done so would have deified her. She is too young for that. She should be allowed to flower, to develop her own path of activism, find her own voice and worldview.

BAN ON JWALA GUTTA

A lifetime ban on ace badminton shuttler Jwala Gutta is not something that is best for health for Indian Badminton Association.

Taking heed of the public uproar, IBA, has constituted an independent three body committee to look into the matter.

What is ironical is that the sports body has chose fit to lash the whip on its top player, someone who has won laurels for the country, winning a bronze medal at the 2011 World Badminton Championships.

At a time when sports bodies and administrators are coming under glare for their omissions and commissions, BAI has not glorified itself in anyway by its action.

Discipline and nurturing goes hand in hand.  If an errant player is disciplined, then it is also expected that administrators  sincerely nurture talent and keep themselves above politics and scams. How many of the sports administrators can pass this litmus test.

Punishing is easy. Promoting an environment of impartiality and excellence is tough. That’s what is required and expected from sports bodies like BAI. Then , if a player doesn’t toes the line, action against him or her will be called exemplary.

ASARAM - FAMILY AFFAIRS

Skeletons are tumbling out of Asaram Bapu’s cupboard. His whole family is getting embroiled in sexual exploitation scandal. Asaram is already behind bars. Now after a married women had charged his  son Narayan Sai with rape, he is absconding. Police has issued a lookout notice against him. Narayan Sai’s mother and sister are also on the run. Police has charged them with complicity to  crime.

As the sex scandal dragnet closes on Asaram , and murky going-ons  are revealed , a sense of  disgust seems to envelop people, many of whom, till the other day, were his ardent devotees.

It’s a quintessential case of decline of dharma. Spirituality has become a spurious commodity. A money-spinner.

Die-hard Marxist’s are having their day. Their guru Marx has been vindicated. Religion, has finally been proved to be opium of the masses.

There is a general decline of true spirituality. Meditation and devotional worship has given way to ritual and liturgy. And then some more. Somewhere along the way, the core of religion has been discarded, and the shell of externals have shielded  corrupt godmen.

The plight of a wayward and sexually deviant clergy of the Roman Catholic Church is finding a sinster reflection in this land too.

For too long political honchos and moneybags have patronized the independent Hindu clergy who go by the name of godmen. The masses have deified them, bestowing on them cult status . The hype of the Sadhus has reaped hysteria dividends.  All this have made the self-styled sadhus feel invincible.

They feel they can break laws with impunity and get away with it. But now with Asaram behind the bars its clarion call for the society to wake up to the act of charlatans, and expose them with impunity.