Nishant
Unlike Jack Sparrow, the pirate with a heart of gold, his modern-day avatars only seem to be interested in filling their own pots of gold to the brim. And if their avarice translates into stupendous losses for authors and publishers, well, so be it. For the uninitiated, we're referring to pirated versions of popular fiction books that seem to be giving tough competition to their more expensive, 'original' cousins.
These cheap, poor-quality versions of popular books are flooding the market and this despite the fact that world famous authors like JK Rowling have taken up cudgels against the culprits. Rowling for instance, has already sued a website for selling pirated versions of her bestsellers. For avid reader and management consultant Pavan Kumar, "Books are like an asset and one cannot compromise on quality when buying one." On the other hand, there are also the likes of Rachna Rishi, a student, who says, "I'm fond of reading, but cannot afford the expensive original prints, so I go in for the duplicates which are cheaper. After all, the content remains the same."
And booksellers like Md Shameem ensure that there is no dearth of such cheap, off-the-street material. For Shameem, who deals in pirated books, it's as simple as demand and supply. Ask him why he sells pirated books and he'll tell you he does it, "Because people buy these books."
An attitude which has the likes of YP Singh, author of the bestseller Carnage Of Angels, livid. While Singh agrees that books don't come cheap, he also feels that, "Books are priced keeping in mind the intellectual labour put in by the author. But slashing costs will not help curb piracy either," says Singh. Not that Sandeep Dutt, CEO of a well-known chain of bookstores agrees. According to Dutt, "The best way publishers can curb piracy is by following the concept of a realistic pricing strategy. It is indeed difficult for a pirate to come up with a duplicate version of a bestseller, priced as low as Rs 95." Making readers accountable, he adds that they should also make a conscious effort to stay away from pirated stuff.
Or perhaps publishers could take a leaf from this optical storage manufacturing giant's book. The company recently pulled off a virtual coup by releasing a Tamil film catalogue at a price that is guaranteed to put a smile on the faces of movie buffs: Rs 28 for the CD pack and Rs 34 per DVD. Their aim is to acquire 40 per cent of the movie content produced in India in the coming years. Their pricing strategy will also kill the pirated market which is as big as Rs 20,000 crore approximately.
Time people began reading between the lines, eh?
Courtesy: Times of India
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Another forgotten food culture to the fore
VIKRAM DOCTOR
My Oriya friend flipped through the copy of Healthy Oriya Cooking by Bijoylaxmi Hota and Kabita Pattanaik (Rupa Books), and sniffed. "How can an authentic Oriya cookbook not start with paukhalo?" he asked.
He was referring to the dish of lightly fermented rice which many Oriyas would insist is an essential part of an authentic Oriya meal — as is the nap that must follow thanks to the drowsiness induced by its mildly alcoholic nature. Bengalis call it panta-bhat and make it to use up extra rice, but on this matter at least, I think, Oriyas, so long forced to live be overshadowed by Bengalis, will resist attempts at appropriation. Paukhalo is emblematic of Oriya food, which is why friend was disdainful of any Oriya cookbook that didn’t start with it.
In defence of Hota and Pattanaik, they do give a recipe for it as pakhal (just not upfront), describing it as a summer food with several health benefits: "First it has a high cooling effect... Secondly fermented cereal protects the liver. Thirdly pakhal is full of yeast, which promotes healthier cell production." I am not sure how medically reliable their advice is, especially since later they make dubious assertions about the ability of coconut to inactivate viruses like measles, herpes and even HIV. But this sort of stuff is standard to many health books and can be ignored as one turns straight to the recipes.
And these are certainly very welcome. As our knowledge of Indian regional cuisines has developed, Oriya food has remained one of the biggest blank spots. Renowned anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, in his essay How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India (1988) even suggested gloomily that regionalisation accentuates this: "In the jostling of the various local and regional traditions for appreciation and mutual recognition, certain linguistic and regional traditions with greater access to urban resources, institutions, and media are pushing humbler neighbours out of the cosmopolitan view: Thus Telugu food is being progressively pushed out of sight by Tamil cuisine, Oriya by Bengali cuisine, Kannada by Marathi, Rajasthani by Gujarati, and Kashmiri by Punjabi."
Of late, this process has stopped, for several reasons. Greater prosperity moves people away from old eating habits, but also sets up a counter reaction making them aware of what they are losing. People may still not make traditional food regularly, but they will attempt to preserve them in cookbooks or on special occasions, like weddings, or at specialised restaurants. In some cases, even if a region’s food has not got recognition, the food of specific communities within it has: so Kannada food is still little known outside the state, but the food of Mangalore or of the Udipi Shettys has become well known. Sometimes a concept like Kashmir’s wazawan feast or Avadh’s dumpukht technique has become a useful way to sell those cuisines.
Politicians have also helped their home cuisines: thanks to Laloo we know how important sattu is in Bihar, even if we are unlikely to try this flour made of roasted grains and pulses. Probably nothing has done more for Telugu cooking than the hugely popular canteen that Andhra Bhavan operates in Delhi. Foodblogs, often run by nostalgic NRIs, have also helped: for example, onehotstove.blogspot.com run by Nupur in St.Louis, Missouri is a more attractively written source of information on Maharashtrian cooking than any book I’ve found. Finally, the booming cookbook market has made publishers eager for new concepts and titles. Penguin India led the way with its excellent regional cooking series (in particular, the books on Kodava and Northeastern cooking filled really interesting niches), and others have followed. Tarla Dalal, for example, having exhausted Gujarati food and weird vegetarian adaptations of foreign cuisines, has written a decent book on Rajasthani vegetarian food.
But in all this Oriya food has been missing. Oriyas are well known as cooks, but always in the kitchens of others. The state makes more headlines for malnutrition than for its food, and Naveen Patnaik must rightly be too busy tackling that (and learning Oriya) to promote paukhalo. The lack of efforts from expat Oriyas is more mystifying, but the only other Oriya cookbook I know of, Purba: Feasts from the East, is by New York-based Laxmi Parida. Could paukhalo work as a selling point — maybe in restaurants with rooms for a nap afterwards? Hota and Pattanaik clearly hope that health will be a selling point, but I think most cuisines, in the totality of their original forms ( i.e. no extra rich foods just because you can afford it now) are quite healthy. This health obsession might also have restricted the book: is this why the dishes cooked as prasadam in Orissa’s famous temples don’t feature? They may be healthy in the traditional Indian sense of using few spices and no onions or garlic, but might use too much ghee to pass muster with a nutritionist. Yet they are a vital part of the state’s food heritage and their lack leaves the book feeling incomplete.
Still, all writers write books for their own reasons and we must be grateful to Hota and Pattanaik for doing this much. With Healthy Oriya Cooking one gap in chronicling India’s regional foods is partly filled. There are other gaps I hope will soon be filled as well: the food of interior Maharashtra, or more generally, the Deccan; Bihar, despite Laloo’s efforts; the pahadi foods of Himachal and Uttaranchal; Bhopal, the one major Muslim city cuisine without a good cookbook; Karnataka needs more coverage, particularly communities like the Bunts. Can readers suggest other Indian cuisines that need their cookbooks?
Courtesy: Economic Times
My Oriya friend flipped through the copy of Healthy Oriya Cooking by Bijoylaxmi Hota and Kabita Pattanaik (Rupa Books), and sniffed. "How can an authentic Oriya cookbook not start with paukhalo?" he asked.
He was referring to the dish of lightly fermented rice which many Oriyas would insist is an essential part of an authentic Oriya meal — as is the nap that must follow thanks to the drowsiness induced by its mildly alcoholic nature. Bengalis call it panta-bhat and make it to use up extra rice, but on this matter at least, I think, Oriyas, so long forced to live be overshadowed by Bengalis, will resist attempts at appropriation. Paukhalo is emblematic of Oriya food, which is why friend was disdainful of any Oriya cookbook that didn’t start with it.
In defence of Hota and Pattanaik, they do give a recipe for it as pakhal (just not upfront), describing it as a summer food with several health benefits: "First it has a high cooling effect... Secondly fermented cereal protects the liver. Thirdly pakhal is full of yeast, which promotes healthier cell production." I am not sure how medically reliable their advice is, especially since later they make dubious assertions about the ability of coconut to inactivate viruses like measles, herpes and even HIV. But this sort of stuff is standard to many health books and can be ignored as one turns straight to the recipes.
And these are certainly very welcome. As our knowledge of Indian regional cuisines has developed, Oriya food has remained one of the biggest blank spots. Renowned anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, in his essay How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India (1988) even suggested gloomily that regionalisation accentuates this: "In the jostling of the various local and regional traditions for appreciation and mutual recognition, certain linguistic and regional traditions with greater access to urban resources, institutions, and media are pushing humbler neighbours out of the cosmopolitan view: Thus Telugu food is being progressively pushed out of sight by Tamil cuisine, Oriya by Bengali cuisine, Kannada by Marathi, Rajasthani by Gujarati, and Kashmiri by Punjabi."
Of late, this process has stopped, for several reasons. Greater prosperity moves people away from old eating habits, but also sets up a counter reaction making them aware of what they are losing. People may still not make traditional food regularly, but they will attempt to preserve them in cookbooks or on special occasions, like weddings, or at specialised restaurants. In some cases, even if a region’s food has not got recognition, the food of specific communities within it has: so Kannada food is still little known outside the state, but the food of Mangalore or of the Udipi Shettys has become well known. Sometimes a concept like Kashmir’s wazawan feast or Avadh’s dumpukht technique has become a useful way to sell those cuisines.
Politicians have also helped their home cuisines: thanks to Laloo we know how important sattu is in Bihar, even if we are unlikely to try this flour made of roasted grains and pulses. Probably nothing has done more for Telugu cooking than the hugely popular canteen that Andhra Bhavan operates in Delhi. Foodblogs, often run by nostalgic NRIs, have also helped: for example, onehotstove.blogspot.com run by Nupur in St.Louis, Missouri is a more attractively written source of information on Maharashtrian cooking than any book I’ve found. Finally, the booming cookbook market has made publishers eager for new concepts and titles. Penguin India led the way with its excellent regional cooking series (in particular, the books on Kodava and Northeastern cooking filled really interesting niches), and others have followed. Tarla Dalal, for example, having exhausted Gujarati food and weird vegetarian adaptations of foreign cuisines, has written a decent book on Rajasthani vegetarian food.
But in all this Oriya food has been missing. Oriyas are well known as cooks, but always in the kitchens of others. The state makes more headlines for malnutrition than for its food, and Naveen Patnaik must rightly be too busy tackling that (and learning Oriya) to promote paukhalo. The lack of efforts from expat Oriyas is more mystifying, but the only other Oriya cookbook I know of, Purba: Feasts from the East, is by New York-based Laxmi Parida. Could paukhalo work as a selling point — maybe in restaurants with rooms for a nap afterwards? Hota and Pattanaik clearly hope that health will be a selling point, but I think most cuisines, in the totality of their original forms ( i.e. no extra rich foods just because you can afford it now) are quite healthy. This health obsession might also have restricted the book: is this why the dishes cooked as prasadam in Orissa’s famous temples don’t feature? They may be healthy in the traditional Indian sense of using few spices and no onions or garlic, but might use too much ghee to pass muster with a nutritionist. Yet they are a vital part of the state’s food heritage and their lack leaves the book feeling incomplete.
Still, all writers write books for their own reasons and we must be grateful to Hota and Pattanaik for doing this much. With Healthy Oriya Cooking one gap in chronicling India’s regional foods is partly filled. There are other gaps I hope will soon be filled as well: the food of interior Maharashtra, or more generally, the Deccan; Bihar, despite Laloo’s efforts; the pahadi foods of Himachal and Uttaranchal; Bhopal, the one major Muslim city cuisine without a good cookbook; Karnataka needs more coverage, particularly communities like the Bunts. Can readers suggest other Indian cuisines that need their cookbooks?
Courtesy: Economic Times
The prose and the place
Most of us carry a little of the place that we have been to for a holiday in our daily lives. The hangover lasts for a few days and then it is back to the usual business of living. How do creative minds view their sojourns? Do they let the places spill over in their writings or their books? Do they see places as quick shots to boost their creativity and sponge them off like photographic plates to be exposed later while they write?
Read More
Read More
Jayakanthan's Novel in English
Last Friday, New Horizon Media, launched their English imprint, Indian Writings. It had published 4 new titles and 4 more are in the pipeline. Indian Writings focusses on translations of regional languages works in English. First four titles are translations of famous four novels from Tamil.
Today's Hindu carried a review of Jayakanthan's Love and Loss. Read it here.
Today's Hindu carried a review of Jayakanthan's Love and Loss. Read it here.
Thirumandiram in Malayalam
It all began with a love for Tamil language which gradually grew into a passion.
Five years after he came out with the Malayalam commentary of Tamil epic Thirukural, K G Chandrasekharan Nair has now completed the commentary and translation of yet another Tamil epic - Thirumantram.
The three-volume translation, to be published by DC Books, is all set to be released in August.
A visit to his house at Kundamankadavu turned a revealing journey as we are received by a father-daughter duo, both bound together by a common thread - a love for Tamil literature.
While Chandrasekharan Nair had brought out the commentary on Thirukural in 2002, daughter Shailaja Raveendran has translated the couplets in simple Malayalam, the pocket edition of which was brought out by DC Books last week.
At the house, we are greeted by books and more books. Among them are the three thickly-bound books, the translated volumes of Tamil epic Thirumantram. And even before we ask, Chandrasekheran Nair tells us what made him translate them. ‘‘It has in-depth meanings which Malayalis should not miss out. Many have translated it earlier but I wanted to earn an experience for myself, of having imbibed a great epic.’’
But Thirumantram, the devotional songs by Sidhar Thirumular, still remains largely ‘untouched’ in terms of translations.
‘‘This translation includes commentaries and references, and is called a bhashyam.’’ Chandrasekharan Nair seems a satisfied writer.
An employee with the Tamil Nadu Cooperative Department for 36 years, it was his settling down in the city after retirement and his acquaintance with the late poets Ayyappa Paniker and Guptan Nair that opened the doors of literature to him.
He is the brother-in-law of ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair, a relation that he cherishes and carries with pride.
It was upon his insistence that Shailaja set out to translate Thirukural for the pocket edition. ‘‘If his translation is scholarly, mine is simple - for the common man,’’ she says.
Shailaja has translated the short stories of Tamil writer S Murugaiya (Chudar) and is now into yet another translation of a Tamil work - one of Kannadasan’s books on Hindu philosophy.
Shailaja marks out certain couplets from the translated Thirukural that are oft-repeated by President Kalam in his speeches. And they mean: ‘Those who have the courage to carry out their wishes as they dreamt will reach their goals as they wished.’ It is a similar dream that carries this father-daughter duo on a mission to make available to Malayalis some of the finest literary works in another language.
Courtesy: Newindpress
Five years after he came out with the Malayalam commentary of Tamil epic Thirukural, K G Chandrasekharan Nair has now completed the commentary and translation of yet another Tamil epic - Thirumantram.
The three-volume translation, to be published by DC Books, is all set to be released in August.
A visit to his house at Kundamankadavu turned a revealing journey as we are received by a father-daughter duo, both bound together by a common thread - a love for Tamil literature.
While Chandrasekharan Nair had brought out the commentary on Thirukural in 2002, daughter Shailaja Raveendran has translated the couplets in simple Malayalam, the pocket edition of which was brought out by DC Books last week.
At the house, we are greeted by books and more books. Among them are the three thickly-bound books, the translated volumes of Tamil epic Thirumantram. And even before we ask, Chandrasekheran Nair tells us what made him translate them. ‘‘It has in-depth meanings which Malayalis should not miss out. Many have translated it earlier but I wanted to earn an experience for myself, of having imbibed a great epic.’’
But Thirumantram, the devotional songs by Sidhar Thirumular, still remains largely ‘untouched’ in terms of translations.
‘‘This translation includes commentaries and references, and is called a bhashyam.’’ Chandrasekharan Nair seems a satisfied writer.
An employee with the Tamil Nadu Cooperative Department for 36 years, it was his settling down in the city after retirement and his acquaintance with the late poets Ayyappa Paniker and Guptan Nair that opened the doors of literature to him.
He is the brother-in-law of ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair, a relation that he cherishes and carries with pride.
It was upon his insistence that Shailaja set out to translate Thirukural for the pocket edition. ‘‘If his translation is scholarly, mine is simple - for the common man,’’ she says.
Shailaja has translated the short stories of Tamil writer S Murugaiya (Chudar) and is now into yet another translation of a Tamil work - one of Kannadasan’s books on Hindu philosophy.
Shailaja marks out certain couplets from the translated Thirukural that are oft-repeated by President Kalam in his speeches. And they mean: ‘Those who have the courage to carry out their wishes as they dreamt will reach their goals as they wished.’ It is a similar dream that carries this father-daughter duo on a mission to make available to Malayalis some of the finest literary works in another language.
Courtesy: Newindpress
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