Also, today, in Germany (I wish I could be at two places at the same time, like a Rushdie character!) my friend @meenakandasamy gets honored by @PEN_Deutschland:
My understanding is that the ceremony in Germany and our event at Ann Arbor will both be available online, or through a recording later.
Writers should be read, agreed or argued with, debated, challenged; writers should never be jailed, tortured, beaten, attacked, or killed.
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If Jeff Bezos thinkseditorial views don't matter, and off-the-cuff pods have greater value, why doesn't he invest more in podcasts and let an adult take over WaPo? If he genuinely believes op-eds are a dialogue among the elite, why doesn't he cancel the op-ed section? 1/2
Reason: he wants it both ways. He wants the elite to 'like' him -- which is why he began his business as the world's biggest bookstore -- not the biggest grocery store, not the biggest wine bar, nor the biggest flea-market. And now that the flea-market is the cash cow, 2/3
he wants to turn the bookstore / WaPo / 'elite' product into an expendable extra. His rockets take precedence over books on rocket science. I think it was Garcia Marquez who once said, if books sell like hot cakes, try eating them. 3/4
If @DeShobhaa shook up the fawning and cloying world of film journalism with her juicy, racy writing, she was able to do so because her publisher, Nari Hira, believed in her ability to do so, and knew it was time to shake up the complacent coverage of the film industry. 1/n
Filmfare, Star&Style, and other magazines followed decorum, and didn't offer the reader a peek into the foibles of movie stars. Nari wanted no prisoners, and Shobhaa took no prisoners. And Stardust was born. During Emergency, Stardust fought censorship. 2/n
Amitabh Bachchan was livid with Stardust, and said he'd boycott it, and Stardust said, er, no, we will boycott you, and Stardust did just that, not mentioning him by name. A truce followed much later, with the tall angry man eating the humble pie. 3/n
The trouble with such fine initiatives is the lack of accountability and legitimacy. Yes, at one level, BD is at ground zero, and needs to reimagine itself. But who is to do the imagining? Without popular mandate, the exercise might become elite-driven. That's why elections. 1/2
Perhaps those elections should be for a SA's CODESA-type forum, with good, proper representation (along with @TheDavidBergman's excellent idea of a TRC) to create a new, 'rainbow' constitution. Garment exports and ties with the world can wait. It should be inclusive, but...
... not necessarily consensus-driven (which would allow recalcitrant minorities to stop progress). It should look at 6-point charter and BD's raison d'etre: a home for Bengalis, many of whom maybe Muslim but with room and space for all as equal citizens. +
The lesson from the Chomsky hospitalisation for social media is simple: do what the much-reviled 'mainstream' media is supposed to do as a matter of routine: verify facts before posting/commenting/offering tributes. A salutary lesson for everyone who uses social media.
Commentators on social media who ridicule the mainstream media for being 'late' with a story, or 'not reporting' a story will, I hope, realise now, that sometimes the mainstream media is slow precisely because it is trying to get the facts right.
It doesn't mean that the mainstream media always gets it right--but it has checks and balances, incentives and disincentives, and laws and codes, with accountability mechanisms.
When @Mint_Lounge editor @shalinimb asked some of us to name any work in our mothertongue that inspired us and our thinking about democracy (as India goes to polls), 12 of us responded.
I picked the Gujarati novel Socrates (1974) by Manubhai Pancholi "Darshak." Today, on my LinkedIn page, Mrinmayee Ranade asked about the absence of Marathi writers on the list. Fair question; there has been excellent writing about democracy and freedom in Marathi. 2/n
I was born in the city once known as Bombay, can understand Marathi well, read it slowly, and speak it though not always grammatically. I've read some Marathi poetry in the original and some in translation, and some prose in translation. 3/n