To begin with... gibberish gibberish gibberish

Writing a good and catchy intro (opening lines) for a story has assumed so much significance in journalism that for many reporters, often the intro is the story. Understandably so, because competition between broadsheets has become so cutthroat, that newsroom bosses remain under pressure to churn out content which will attract the reader first and maybe inform him later. Fresh recruits ‘on the beat’ sent to some press conference carry that distinguishable expression of worry over their faces that voices the concern, ‘Where do I pick up the story from?’

The question is not illegitimate, but its interpretation has changed of late. ‘Where do I pick up the story from’ earlier used to mean which of the so many things talked about at the conference holds the highest importance – thereby deserving place in the opening lines. Now it means what smartass and wittily constructed sentence (even if vaguely relevant to the story and its facts) can I come up with to get the reader read my news item. It is like using Aishwarya Rai to advertise a new electric drill or a bulldozer. Viewer spots a beautiful face staring out of a newspaper ad, and once the attention is captured, we can leverage it to sell whatever… fairness crème, television, cooking oil or Patton tanks.

No real harm is done in writing a catchy intro to attract a reader toward a news item, as long as the item performs due diligence in delivering all the facts in the later paragraphs.

How are fresh recruits reacting to the newsroom pressure for good intros? Quite funnily. I have seen a huge number of fresh recruits set their browser homepages to one of the many websites on the Internet that contain famous quotes by famous people from where they cull out intros for their stories. If the story has a sociological flavour, begin with a Chomsky quote. For political, it is Abraham Lincoln of JFK. If the story is on personalities or celebrities, Freud has blurted out enough dope on people and behaviour to work as coherent intros. And George Bernard Shaw is the all-seasons man, he has said something witty about everything before dying. PG Wodehouse is the resort of the humorously inclined.

Is it doing the reader any harm? Mostly no. Because stories allotted to a fresh recruit are usually not important enough to affect the reader’s life in a big way. Is it doing the young reporter any harm? Maybe yes. Excessive pressure on intros does channelize all energy towards those first four sentences of the story. The remaining 300 words end up being mishmash and a vague representation of the facts. Over time, will this generation of reporters become as good writers as the newsroom bosses they work under?

One look at the Metro pages of any of the half-dozen broadsheets in Mumbai proves this. Beyond the intro, most stories are a mess. They begin with something and conclude with something completely unrelated.

As a classic example, I copy-paste the intro and the final paragraph below of one such story I read and leave it to you to guess what subject the story was about.

Intro: Men are four: He who knows not and knows not he knows not, he is a fool – shun him; He who knows not and knows he knows not, he is simple – teach him; He who knows and knows not he knows, he is asleep – wake him; He who knows and knows he knows, he is wise – follow him!

Ending paragraph: “Some of the challenges involved in KPO will be maintaining higher quality standards, investment in KPO infrastructure, the lack of talent pool, requirement of higher level of control, confidentiality and enhanced risk management." Mr Walia adds.          

Nothing Doing

And then Diwali shopping was taken hostage with our lives being the ransom.

I was in merry mode in the bustling Karol Bagh market with a friend when the Delhi triple blasts occured, and even at 6:45 pm the market did not seem to have any inkling of the mayhem that had happened a couple of kilometers away at Paharganj. Only after I received a couple of frantic calls from outstation friends asking if I was safe did I know that crowded spots in Delhi were the most dangerous places to be on earth at that time.

Our first reaction, naturally, was 'Vacate This Place'. Outside Karol Bagh too, things were pretty calm, even as the rush hour Delhi traffic grappled to remain stable in light of the city's fresh crisis. I must laud the Traffic Police for their management though, for despite the blasts and the accompanying chaos, traffic moved on smoothly on our entire way from Karol Bagh to Bengali Market via CP, all of which are at stone's throw from Paharganj. Before leaving Karol Bagh, we really doubted if my friend would be able to reach her home for the day.

My condolences towards the families left aggrieved by today's blasts. The blasts have occured at prime festive period of both the Hindu and Muslim community. Jaish-e-Mohammed is being said to have committed the ghastly act. I wonder how they justify their jehaad to themselves by ending people of their own community and disrupting a festival that celebrates the same Prophet that they cite to justify the jehaad. No it's not complicated, it's just plain sick.

Jazz update

I must admit, I had severely underestimated the prowess of a five-string bass until I watched that Flecktones concert video yesterday. Now because Victor Wooten is an unbelievably demented and probably the most brilliant cat ever to hold a five string, he can do to harmonics what Wodehouse can do to the idyllic British life.

There are at least 5 harmonics hidden on each string below the fifth fret, adding up to some 25 on a five-stringer, which can be used to construct a fairly complex piece with a simultaneous bassline no the E and A strings. Who'd have thunk! You have to see Victor do it to believe it. Besides Victor, the only bass player who has experimented so extensively with harmonics is Jaco Pastorius, expecially in the latter half of his career.

Hazaar magajmaari later, I laid my hands on five bootlegs of the Jonas Hellborg-Shawn Lane-Andrea Marchesini India Tour. While the Delhi concert, which I had incidentally attended in 2003, is a tight set featuring a spunky Time is the Enemy. The Someplace Else and Tripura House concerts are quite similar but a little predictable. The two-disc Aizawl concert is probably the most complex and best technically speaking.

Meanwhile, the Sunny Jain Collective is touring India and I hope to catch them while in Delhi.

Of Honeymooners and Fitting Replies

It so happened, one member of a Yahoogroup that I am member of married (a girl) and immediately left for France for a long honeymoon-cum-business trip in the first week of this month. Before leaving, he turned on the on-vacation auto-reply feature on his email account. Anybody who sends him an email now gets a "I'm on vacation, but I will reply after returning" message generated automatically by his mailbox.

The problem that has so resulted, is that any email sent to the Yahoogroup reaches the honeymooner's email account and makes it generate the automated vacation reply. Since an email sent to a Yahoogroup comes back to the sender, the automated vacation reply reaches back to the mail account in question and elicits another auto-reply. An infinite loop takes over and there's mayhem! Like testerday, group members exchanged some 25 emails all of which invoked the honeymooner's mailbox to go into an infinite loop and fill the Yahoogroup by over 400 vacation auto-reply mails in the past 24 hours.

The honeymooning couple, meanwhile, are understandably, err.. honeymooning in Paris, completely cut-off from the Internet, oblivious to the whole thing. The Moderator, who can block the honeymooner's emails until his return, is away reporting the earthquake in Kashmir.

Any solutions? :D

Dare to disagree with Arindam Chaudhry's IIPM?

As a solution to dalits' and minorities' electricity problems, Malay Chaudhry (the self-proclaimed management guru father of his self-proclaimed management guru ponytailed son Arindam Chaudhry) calls for giving each dalit household a diesel engine dynamo 'which will give light for 4 hours a day during the night' (akin to having an eggs-&-sandwiches breakfast for the afternoon dinner). He also advocates two tube wells in each dalit village to solve the drinking water problem, complete with a business plan (it's not too tough to attach statistics to an argument).

(Source: 'Renewing India: Let Caste/Community Divide Disappear' in the IIPM full-page advertisement in October 10, 2005 edition of Hindustan Times, Mumbai. No newspaper considers Malay Chaudhry a man worthwhile enough to write a column, so he has to pay and get his articles printed via advertisements)

The atrocious english language slips aside, the stupendously rising fuel prices and the sheer incongruity and drying up of the water table make Malay Chaudhry's arguments sound like those coming from a class VIII student. Is THIS the class, understanding and maturity of Malay Chaudhry, a former IIM Bangalore professor and Founder Director of what he claims to be 'India's no 1 B-school'?!!

You might ask me why I am even taking the IIPM propoganda so seriously. It takes only a pea-brain to figure out how dubious the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) is as a place to study from their full-page approval-seeking print advertisements.

I am doing this because if you question or pooh-pooh the claims of IIPM from the POV of a concerned consumer, like Mumbai-based magazine JAM magazine did and blogger Gaurav Sabnis followed up with more questions, IIPM stifles your voice by slapping a Rs 125 crore damages legal notice and threatening police action.

Simultaneously, the IIPM PR machinery spruces up fake blogs all over the Internet to discredit Gaurav Sabnis' name. Now what if more concerned citizens question IIPM's unfair practices... will Arindam Chaudhry stoop to newer lows as sending goondas to each home?

It would be interesting to know if there are any cases pending in the consumer courts against IIPM. It is very likely that there are. The AICTE has already objected to the use of the phrase 'Indian Institute of' in IIPM's name.

Meanwhile, several bloggers have come up to back Gaurav Sabnis.

If IIPM actually goes ahead with a legal recourse against Sabnis, they will end up axing their own foot. A defamation case eventually puts the truth to test. Imagine if this blows up into a court case, and a couple of disgruntled IIPM students are gathered to come forward and testify against the institute's malpractices in a court. I am sure the pony-tailed and mouse-voiced Arindam wouldn't consider that an increase in his happiness quotient.

My peon put a fly in my coffee

Business Risk Management elicits visions of a group of dashing necktie wearing smart-alecs working overtime to protect an enterprise from investment, capital and credit risks, godown damages, hackers and such.

The US-based business risk consultant firm Control Risk Group (due to make its formal announcement of India operations tomorrow), however on its website offers solutions to 'bomb threat', 'audio forensics' and 'kidnapping' too for businesses!

Did you know that companies also outsource to Control Risk Group for protection from...

• Construction Fraud
• Corruption
• Defensive Driving Training (when the CEO is attacked by a biker gang at Worli sea face)
• Extortion (D-company, beware!)
• Product contamination (is there poison in your project leader's masala-chai?)
• Anti-money laundering.

I say, what about the biggest risk of them all: intra-office romance?