Lane (ing) the highway-how safe, how fast

I have been traveling, though occasionally, on the Bangalore-Mysore highway for almost 5 years. It was around 2000 AD that I went to Maddur and traveled through the highway. More recently, I traveled 4-5 days back, when I went to Mysore. The highway has changed and changed considerably.

Maddur lies around 80 kms from Bangalore on the Bangalore-Mysore highway. It is a quite place with a temple of Lord Shiva or Iswara. Surrounded by a river and beautiful valley, it is an ideal place to start your journey of exploring the South India. It is believed that the lingam is 800 years old and has great divine power. So it was Maddur that gave me the taste of , which was chaotic and filled with diversions. The average traffic speed did not cross beyond 50 kmh.

Now the highway has four lanes with huge divider separating the two way traffic. My father drove at an average speed of 85-90 kmh. It was great fun. However, while enjoying the thrills of great speed, I stated to think of the importance of fast highways in the development of a country. Yes, the fast highway reduces the amount of time spent on traveling, thus reducing the cost spent on fuel and thereby helping the economy of a country.

Fast highways may reduce your traveling time, but it can also be more dangerous than a chaotic highway. Fast highways have to be induced as a culture of the country. The new four-lane Bangalore-Mysore highway may have reduced the time of travel, but has also created several other economic and safety problems. The highway passes through several villages and small towns. Each of them has small lanes that connect them to the highway. These innumerable invasions can be of great danger.

For example, when we were coming back from Mysore, three men were crossing the highway along with their motorcycle without being worried about the approaching super fast vehicles. In India, driving at a speed of above 100 kmh is super fast. They were immune from any kind on danger to them or to the vehicle that may hit them. The scratching sounds of several vehicles also did not have any affect on them. They simply moved on. However, by the grace of god, any causality was averted. Why did they do so?

The answer is not so easy. Highways in India are the product of political manipulations rather than economic considerations. They are used and treated politically, either by the politicians or by the general public. We have to move a step ahead. The common men have to be made aware of the importance of fast highways and have to be made a part of them. They have to be aware of the importance of such highways in their own life. It is difficult for a common man to understand the trickle effect of the economics. They have to be made the part of the highways. After all, highways are made by the people, for the people and of the people.

Cheers
Kundan

Grading a book-Where to start?

To arrive at a grading system that takes into account every aspects of a book-from conceptualization to its final reading- is easier said than done. The final product that a reader has in hand goes through a long gestation period. It passes through several stages that somehow affect its character. Each stage plays an important role in shaping the final outcome.

In this article, I would briefly point out each step that has a role in making a book. In the subsequent articles, I would explore each of them in great detail in order to find out their real importance and how they affect a book-positively or negatively. I would also try to arrive at a grading system that takes into account each of them and in turn remains true to the book.

Let us start the journey.
The book that you read travels a lot through different stages. What are these stages?

1. Demand for a book in the market
2. Editor(s) visualize a book or a goes ahead by visualizing a full series (more true in the case of children's books)
3. Hunt for an author
4. Editor meets an author
5. Author writes the manuscript
6. Manuscript goes through intense scrutiny
7. Manuscript is corrected
8. Manuscript is send back to the author
9. Manuscript again goes through intense scrutiny
10. The final correction
11. Layout is decided
12. Images are hunted
13. Text and images are placed
14. Spreads are sent to the author
15. He gives his final remark
16. Copyediting of the manuscript
17. Final crosschecking of the facts and text
18. Proofreading done
19. Final correction
20. Book is published
21. Book is graded
22. Book is marketed
23. Readers buy and read
24. They make their final comment

These steps more or less suffice the entire book making process. I may have left one or two steps here and there, but all in all these are the major steps through which a book passes and becomes a book. We will talk about them in great detail in my subsequent articles.

Cheers
Kundan

Grading a book-understanding the role of market

Let us be very clear! Books are made at publishing houses. The teacher may want a specific book for his/her students or a reader may like a particular book that can satisfy his/her curiosity. But the fact remains that books are made at publishing houses. They may follow certain rules and specifications (this may be different for different publishing houses), which have to be followed before making a book. They may take into account a teacher's need or a reader's curiosity into account while making a book, but they make books for market. Their editors use their brains to utilize the demands of market. All in all, books are made by publishing houses for the market.

My assessment may appear very simplistic or crude or economy dominated. But the force of the market is clearly very dominant in making a book. Each step, each process and everyone involved in making a book works under the influence of market. Even those who grade a book work for market. Their grading may affect the sell of a book, and in turn they are working as a force of the market.

Let me simplify. The publisher makes a book that he or she thinks will the bestseller. He/she does not want to take any chances. So the book is sent to the grading agencies. The publisher has made the book for a particular group of readers. But the grading agency thinks otherwise. It allocates a grade that is different from what was originally planned. What happens? The grade has actually changed the character of the book. This is the top-down view.

Let us consider the down-top view. The publisher knows the parameters on which a particular agency grades a book. He/she makes a book that follows all those parameters. What happens? The grading agency and its parameters have acted as the force of the market and changed the character of the entire process of book-making.

So, for me, in order to understand the grading systems and their parameters, we will have to understand what goes behind the scene while making a book. Any grading system that ignores the forces of market while grading a book undermines the book itself.

Am I ignoring a teacher's requirements or a reader's curiosity? Certainly not. They play a very fundamental role in creating a market. In fact, they provide the very basis on which the foundation of book market is created. They provide the demand for a book, and in turn create a market for the book. They start the very process of making a book. They can never be ignored.

One of the basic flaws of the parameters of the grading agencies is that they assume the reader and the teacher as a homogeneous category. They assume that every 5 year old kid thinks and demands in a similar way. They take it for granted that every primary teacher has the same requirements. This assumption is far from truth. Each kid is different from other. Each teacher thinks and acts differently from his or her counterpart. So a particular grade may restrict the role of a book. We need a grading system that removes all the restrictions on a book and allows it to be different for different readers.

Let us have a grading system that does not limit a book within the boundaries of its parameters. A book can not be limited within boundaries for the simple reason that it assumes different character for different readers. Let us have a grading system that first remains true to the book itself and then forces the book to transcend its boundaries, if it has any. Let us create a boundary-less grading system.

Cheers
Kundan

Grading a book-why and how- II

The difficulty with a single line of text, the things that it states and hides and the effects that it can have on reader were discussed in the previous post. In this part we will talk, in brief, about the use of an image.

It is believed that use of image or images are vital in children's books. They collaborate with the text and make the reading interesting and understanding easy. However, using an image(s) creates several problems.

Let us take an example:
To collaborate with the text 'Butterfly is an insect', we need an image. Remember, the age group of our book is 3 to 5. Now we have to think on several issues before finalizing an image:

1. nature of the image, i.e. whether it would be a photograph, or illustration, drawing or a cartoon
2. If it is a photograph then whether it should be a cutout or include surroundings. Which butterfly will be used in the photograph? Whether the background should be the natural habitat or something else?
3. If we are using the drawing, what should be the color of the butterfly, what should be the angle of projection, which part of the life should the drawing depict?
4. If we are using cartoons then how true cartoons should be with the reality?

These are some of the problems that we face while using a single image. The problem can continue. How many images do we use in a single spread? What will be the main image and why? How other images should be different from the main image? Should we remain consistent in our layout-throughout the book or throughout the series?

Book making is not an easy job. Problems are many. The article Grading a book-why and how has tried to outline some of the basic problems that we face with two of the fundamentals of a book-text and image. The following articles would deal in detail with each book making process. I would try to find out how these process can and do affect the parameters on which we grade a book.

Cheers
Kundan

Grading a book-why and how-I

Creating books for children is a catch-22 situation. You are forced to restrict the flow of your creativity to match with that of your target group. However, your creativity can't be too chaotic or closed. It has to give the sense of being open and fluid.

In USA, there are several institutions and agencies involved in grading a book. The entire book is throughly studied in terms of the total number of words used, images, illustrations, page layout, page size, use of complex and simple sentences and many other parameters. For example, Fountas and Pinell, the leading book grading agency of USA has developed several similar parameters to grade a book. A book can be graded between Grade A to Z. Grade A being the book for children that are learning to read, while Grade Z being the book for children who are reading to learn.

I have been an editor working on children books for many years. I have been involved in almost every procedure and aspect of making or creating a children book. And I can safely talk on almost every aspect of book making processes. What is the importance of book making processes in grading a book? Are they more important than a book itself? Why do we need to grade a book? What is more fundamental in grading a book-" the teaching experience or the reading experience"? In other words, who should be considered while grading a book-a teacher or a reader? Does grading restricts and limits the entire purpose of making a book? Who can grade a book-those who make or create it, those who read it, those who use it to teach or those who are independent to all aspects of a book?

I would, in several articles, try to answer and find answers of these and many other queries that are important in understanding a book itself. In this article, I would limit myself on understanding the difficulties of grading a book.

One day my managing editor called me and our entire department in the confrence room. He was serious and that indicated that he meant business. He asked all of us to be ready to make a series of books on animals for the children between age group of 3 to 5. I was shocked, 'how can a 3 years old kid read and understand the complex world of animals'. Atleast I never did that. I asked and he replied that books for this age group are made as a refernce book for parents. They read aloud these books to their kids. The idea sound great. Wow! we are involving parents in the reading business.

But what if parents themselves have little idea about the animal world. Lets take an example.
The chapter on butterfly says- "Butterfly is an insect".
The above sentence assumes that the reader (read the parents) knows:

• what an insect is
• that there are the other insects, and
  
• insects are animals.
  

There are many other things that the above sentence assumes:

• that the reader knows that we use an before any word that starts with a vowel
• that the reader knows what the vowel is

There are many things that the above sentence hides:

1. It does not say that there are other butterflies
2. It does not say that insects are animals

to be continues...................

Cheers
Kundan

A day in the city of palaces

On 23 rd, we decided to head for a one day excursion around Bangalore. After debating for hours and oscillating between the religion and fun, we finally decided to go to Mysore. Our destination at Mysore was Brindavan Garden and Mysore Palace. Brindavan Garden is 20 Kms northwest of Mysore. It is located at the base of the Krisnarajasagar Dam.

The dam was built 1932. The garden became famous in 1960s, when it provided backdrop from several films. Spread in about 150 acres of land, the garden is filled with several beautiful fountains. The dam provides the majestic view. One should surely visit the garden and take a walk at the top of the dam. The view from the top of the dam is breathtaking.

After spending more than 2 hrs at the dam and in the garden, we headed towards our next stop, the Mysore Palace. The palace is simply magnificent. It grandeur and royalty can not be described in words.

The palace was made in 1912 after the previous palace was destroyed in fire. It was designed by designed by the British architect Henry Irwin and cost over 41 lakhs of rupees. The architecture of the palace is filled with domes, columns and beautifully carved pillars. It was made in Indo-Saracenic architecture. Indo-Saracenic architecture is the mixture of Hindu, Mughal, Rajput and Gothic arts.

The palace was made during the reigns of Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV [1895- 1940], who is also believed to have played an important role in creating the the modern township of Mysore.

Wodeyars were the feudals of the great Vijaynagar Empire. However, they were successful in creating their own empire by defeating Srirangaraya –the then Viceroy of Vijayanagar. One of the queens of Srirangaraya cursed Raja Wodeyar, which resulted that no ruler of the Wodeyar dynasty ever had a male hair. All the rulers were adopted sons.

The grandeur of palace however remained intact.

Cheers
Kundan

coming to Bangalore

Bangalore has always fascinated me, not only as a city but also as place that has its own life. So, whenever I get a chance, I always come to Bangalore. Apart from my inner soul, I also come to Bangalore to meet my parents. Yes, they live in Bangalore.

This diwali, my wife decided to celebrate her diwali with her maa (my mom). So, we left for Bangalore on 19th of this month. Since flying was not feasible, we decided to travel by train. And when it comes to train, I always prefer Karnataka Express, or simply, the KK. Traveling on KK is like wondering between geography and history. The train ride from Delhi to Bangalore is amazing because of the variety of landscapes that it passes through. I will talk of it on my next blog. KK has several myths associated with it. Yeh itni fast thi, do bar palti kha gayi, 'the train was so fast, it fell down twice'. Pahle jab train daund se khulti thi, to solapur tak dacaiton ka khatra tha, ' Earlier, between Daund to Solapur, there was always the fear of dacoits.

This time, I was traveling with my wife and my sister. So, I was little apprehensive about my co passengers. Traveling on train is as much private as it is public. No one can disturb you till you don't want to get disturbed. However, you can't remain isolated for long even if you don't want to get involved. You can't shut you eyes and ears. This time we had Ganguly family traveling with. We also had a philosopher soldier.

Ganguly family consisted of a old yet pretending to be young Mr. Ganguly, his very nice wife, who later on became our aunty, and two grown up yet childish daughter. They were coming to Bangalore for the first time to meet their daughter.

I always like Bengalis. They have a very strong sense of their own little personal space. They eat when they wish, and eat too many. They sing when they wish and sing very nice. They laugh when they wish and laugh too much. This little space is religiously guarded, outside intrusion is not allowed. Gangulies too had their own space, but this time we were accepted as their own.
We shared a good time. We shared recepies, sang along with them, ate with them and most importantly, laughed with them. All my best wishes to Mr. Ganguly and his family.

The train reached Bangalore on 21st. My father and my brother were waiting for us. I finally reached Bangalore, a city I love to explore. And explore I will in my next blogs.

Cheers
Kundan

Editor: to be or not to be!!!!!!

I have been working as a book editor for years. Well, if reading books were supposed to be difficult, then editing books is simply a pain in the neck. I don't want to discourage the probable book editors, but my experience has made me wiser and compelled me to think on this line.

An editor has several other jobs to do apart from the traditional editing. Traditional editing is knowledge oriented. It requires knowledge of grammar and sense of books. Those who have the knowledge and the natural instinct, prove to be good editors. Editing, in traditional sense, is the natural inborn ability. You have it or you don't. If you are natural, you have fun while editing. You learn and discover several new things. Traditional editing or hardcore editing as some may say is fun.

But editing goes beyond hardcore editing. The process starts with visualizing the book. You tend to make sense of the book that you have thought of. A natural editor loves this challenge. He likes to be in the thick of the action. He wants to be the creator. He takes pride in creating a book.

After visualizing, the editor has to look for the content. The content might come from an author or the in-house content gatherers. Content gatherers are the new breeds of author-like species. They are the result of the great Internet revolution and its motto of free knowledge readily available for all on a finger click.

The author writes according to his whims and fancy. He does not like being tied to write for a particular audience or for a particular age group. He has the boon to flow freely. And the bane of the editor starts. He collects the manuscript from the author and tries to tailor it according to the requirement of the book he once visualized. Or did he? Forget it. The editor also has to keep in mind the great ego of the author. The tailoring should not alter the manuscript to such an extent that it catches the eyes of the author.

Consequently, the editor than relies heavily on his own in-house content providers or gatherers. He does not have to watch for their ego. The content gatherers are to some extent dormant editors. They don't explode or in most cases refuse to explode. They don't want to (sometimes they are prevented to) be the part of the entire process. They simply give content, which is supposed to be edited.

Lets talk about such contents. For a 14-spread book, the content can range from 100 pages to infinity. In between, there are several loose ends that fail to end. These days they are given on MS-word. The word document of such contents use at least 1000 fonts and 1500 formatting styles.

Now the editor is supposed to edit the precious content file. However, sitting for endless hours on the hard chair just to figure out the head and the tail of the document creates all the symptoms of spondylitis. The neck starts to pain.

Somehow, using tried and tested old tricks, the editor finally writes the book he once visualized. Did he? Oh! May be he did.

The book then goes to the creative department. They are supposed to make the layout of the book with the judicious placement of text and the images. By the way, in the developing countries, the responsibilities of image lie with the editor. He has to search for appropriate images that would appear in the book. Remember he once visualized the book.

Since, there are several stages of development, so there are several types of developing countries. Some are more developed, some are less. They are all developing, nonetheless. India for instance is a rapidly developing country. So, the Indian Publishing Creative Departments are progressing even rapidly. They demand less from the editor. They only ask for images that are of better quality with a resolution of 600, which could be printed twice. Oh! They also ask for different angles and poses. I am not making any sense, do I? They also don't make any sense, but they do ask.

An editor, then out of the fear that the book that he once visualized might face a radical twist of the fate, makes hard efforts to sit with the creative book designers. However, his attempt invokes severe resistance from the designers. The resistance transcends the boundaries of book making process and travels to the plane of creativity. They are creative, because they design. They design because they know software. They know software because they know keyboard shortcuts. They know keyboard shortcuts because they have worked umpteen times on that software. And since they have worked umpteen times on that software, they are designers. It's a great designer's vicious cycle that an editor has to resist, before giving his inputs or before his inputs are taken.

The book is some how completed. The designs appear far better than what was originally thought of (this is obviously the great achievement of the designers) and the text is superb (this for the end product that an editor keeps with him, who once visualized a book). The editor is forced to identify only with the text part of the book.

Tell me is being an editor fun? I am not a sadist. Well, editing still is a fun. You know why? Just after taking such as great journey of book making, the editor again starts to visualize a new book!!!!!

Cheers
Kundan

Kiran 'Booker' Desai

Finally, someone from the Desai family managed to win a Bookers Prize. Congratulation. Kiran Desai was awarded the Man Booker Prize for her book The Inheritance Of Loss. Her mother Anita Desai was also nominated five times but could not manage to win. Kiran is the third Indian after Salman Rusdie and Arundhati Roy to win this award.

Many congratulations to Ms. Kiran. It took her 18 long years to write a new book. She recently confessed that she had dificulty finding publishers for her book. Now she does not have to worry. Publishers would chase her to write something or anything.

Wonder what happened to MS. Arundhati Roy. After her date with God of small things, she did not write anything substantial. Though, she makes some contributions from time to time in form of articles on social issues, she did not write any new novel.

Awards have a significant contribution in enhancing the moral of the writer. But sometimes I feel that it can prove detrimental too. For instance, an award puts undue burden on the writer to better his or her previous book or novel. In doing so, some produce briliant piece. However, many fail to write itself.

I sometimes feel that a readers reaction is the best award that a writer can have.

Eating thali

Jaipur is a nice city. It has all the elements of being a huge metropolis, while it has still successfully maintained its ethnicity. When I reached Jaipur, it was time for lunch. After exploring several options, I decided to go for traditional thali. The thali promised unlimited food, such as roties, rajma, dal, aaloo dum, rice and salad. And the entire course was not so costly, only 30 rupees. I filled my stomach with great satisfaction and even payed the waiter a 5 rupees tip.

market recreats traditions........sometimes

I recently went on a one day trip to Jaipur. On the highway, few kilometers before the city, I saw several palaces. These are modern palaces made by several hotel groups, such as Le Meridian. I started to wonder why traditional rajasthani architecture styles have been used. And I realized that market sometimes reinvents traditions to sustain itself. Rajasthan is known for its palaces and royalty. These hotels are recreating the same old palaces and royalty to sustain themselves. You can't own a real palace? Well no problem, make a new one.

My profile

Hi I am Kundan kaushav. I am new to blogging. So, I may make mistakes. Thats fine. But the main purpose of my blog is to create a platform that enables everyone like me to shre their veiws on almost everything.

I have named by blog "summary". The name is used to act as metaphore. We always tend to summarize anything that happens to us or anything that we witness happening to others. I think that the ability to summarize is the one of the basic instincts of humans.

I want to create a platform that gives us the chance to interact with each other through our own summaries.

Cheers

Kundan