diaphanousworld

10th Third Eye Asian Film Festival in Mumbai next week

2011-12-17T19:13:00.000+05:30

It's film festival time, and the Third Eye Asian Film Festival has chalked out an interesting line up of films for its 10th edition.

Third Eye will be inuaugrated on Dec 22 at Ravindra Natya Mandir, or also called PL Deshpande Maharashtra Kala Academy, Prabhadevi in Mumbai. A total of 156 films including 110 feature-length films, and 46 short fiction films would be screened during the week.

Chinese film-maker Wong Xiaoshuai's latest film 11 Flowers will be the opening film of the festival, and Ketan Mehta's much acclaimed Rang Rasiya, based on painter Raja Ravi Varma's life, is likely to be the closing film on Dec 29.

The centrepiece of the festival will be a not-to-be-missed film, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi's A Separation, which won the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 2011 Berlin International Film Festival and Silver Bear for the Best Actor and Best Actress!

The prestigious Asian Film Culture Award, given every year to an Asian director for his outstanding contribution, will be presented to noted Afghan director Siddiq Barmak, who made the acclaimed film Osama.

Bengali actress Madhabi Mukherjee, the lead actress of many of Satyajit Ray's classics including Charulata, will inaugurate a special section, Tagore Week, to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore. The section will showcase a selection of seven films made from 1957 to 2011 based on Thakurda's works. It includes Teen Kanya, and Charulata by Manikda, Kabuliwala, Kshudit Pashan and Atithi by Tapan Sinha, and Choker Bali and Nauka Dubi by Rituparno Ghosh.

In the Asian Master section, the festival will showcase Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, and screen six of his films including The Munketa Sisters, Tokyo Story, Early Spring, Drifting Weeds, The Early Autumn, and Autumn Afternoon. Ozu needs no introduction to Indian cinema lovers.

In Reflection section, five films will be showcased from Iran, Afghanistan and Egypt. Siddiq Barmak's Osama, and Opium War, Asghar Farahadi's Dancing in the Dust, and Beautiful City, and Youssef Chahine's The Destiny

A still from The History of Cinema in village of Popielawy

The festival has started a new section in the last two years titled European Connection which will showcase the work of Polish director Jan Jacob Kolski. Indian cineastes are familiar with the cinema of Polish directors like Kieslowski, and Zanussi who largely made films when Polish government was still involved in film production. Post 1990, there was a major shift in Polish cinema policy, and private sector began making films. Kolski's work belongs to the period after this shift.

The festival will also celebrate the golden jubilee of Film and Television Institute of India which completes 50 years this year by showcasing some films made by FTII alumni. The section will feature Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Katha Purusham, Girish Kasarvalli's Thaisaheba, Vikas Desai's Gehrai, Janu Barua's Haldiya Chore, Ketan Mehta's Mirch Masala, and Shaji Karun's Piravi.

The Focus on Filmmaker section will feature Chinese director Xie Fei. Five of his films including A Girl from Hunan, Silver Bear winner Black Snow, Golden Bear winner Woman from the Lake of Scented Souls, Best Direction winner at Montreal Film festival A Mongolian Tale, and Song of Tibet. Japanese film-maker Takeshi Kitano's three films -- Kids Return, Kikujiro, and A Scene at the Sea -- will also be showcased.

Stills from Turkish films, Distant and My Only Sunshine

The Focus on One Country will feature Turkey this year, and will screen seven films, and all of them have won awards at the international film festival circuit. My Marlon and Brando won the Fipresci award at Jerusalem and Yerevan film festival, Uzak (Distant) won the Grand prize of jury at Cannes FIlm festival, Yamurta (Egg) won the Golden Tulip at Istabul film festival, , My Only Sunshine won the Special Jury award at Berlin.

The festival will also pay tribute to Ashok Kumar on the occasion of his 100th birth anniversary by screening BR Chopra's Gumraah. A tribute to Dev Anand, who passed away on Dec 4, has also been planned.

A package from Uzbekistan will be screened for the first time in India. The festival will also have its other regular sections including Spectrum Asia (38 films), Indian Vista (seven films), and competition sections -- First and Second Film of a Director (16 films), and Short Fiction Film (46 films).

These films would also be screened simultaneously in Pune, and Kolhapur.

How to get your pass for Third Eye

1. Write an email to affmumbai@gmail.com with the subject line: Delegate Registration. Write your name, age, address, and phone number, and put in a request for a delegate pass. The pass costs Rs 500 and will include an ID card with multiple access to the screenings, and a festival catalogue. Based on your email, a pass would be made for you which you can collect the Delegate Registration desks functioning at Plaza Cinema and Ravindra Natya Mandir from Dec 20 onwards. The desk timing are 1 to 7 pm.

2. Visit the Delegate Registration Desks at Plaza Cinema and Ravindra Natya Mandir, and enrol yourself as a delegate after paying a fee of Rs 500. College students and film society members can avail of a special discount and pay only Rs 250.

So happy viewing!

Rahul Dravid's Bradman Oration 2011

2011-12-15T16:48:00.001+05:30

Rahul Dravid’s created history by becoming the first cricketer outside Australia to deliver the prestigious Bradman Oration this year. Like his sublime batting, the man spoke really well, and made some thoughtful points. The speech is not just wonderful for explaining what Indian cricket is all about, Dravid has also mapped what it means to be a sportsman. A must read for everyone.

Rahul Dravid walks back after an epic innings with VVS Laxman

Picture Copyright: AFP

The full text of Rahul Dravid’s lecture at Bradman Oration 2011 at Austalian War Memorial, Canberra on Dec 14, 2011

Thank you for inviting me to deliver the Bradman Oration; the respect and the regard that came with the invitation to speak tonight, is deeply appreciated.

I realise a very distinguished list of gentlemen have preceded me in the ten years that the Bradman Oration has been held. I know that this Oration is held every year to appreciate the life and career of Sir Don Bradman, a great Australian and a great cricketer. I understand that I am supposed to speak about cricket and issues in the game - and I will.

Yet, but first before all else, I must say that I find myself humbled by the venue we find ourselves in. Even though there is neither a pitch in sight, nor stumps or bat and balls, as a cricketer, I feel I stand on very sacred ground tonight. When I was told that I would be speaking at the National War Memorial, I thought of how often and how meaninglessly, the words 'war', 'battle', 'fight' are used to describe cricket matches.

Yes, we cricketers devote the better part of our adult lives to being prepared to perform for our countries, to persist and compete as intensely as we can - and more. This building, however, recognises the men and women who lived out the words - war, battle, fight - for real and then gave it all up for their country, their lives left incomplete, futures extinguished.

The people of both our countries are often told that cricket is the one thing that brings Indians and Australians together. That cricket is our single common denominator.

India's first Test series as a free country was played against Australia in November 1947, three months after our independence. Yet the histories of our countries are linked together far more deeply than we think and further back in time than 1947.

We share something else other than cricket. Before they played the first Test match against each other, Indians and Australians fought wars together, on the same side. In Gallipoli, where, along with the thousands of Australians, over 1300 Indians also lost their lives. In World War II, there were Indian and Australian soldiers in El Alamein, North Africa, in the Syria-Lebanon campaign, in Burma, in the battle for Singapore.

Before we were competitors, Indians and Australians were comrades. So it is only appropriate that we are here this evening at the Australian War Memorial, where along with celebrating cricket and cricketers, we remember the unknown soldiers of both nations.

It is however, incongruous, that I, an Indian, happen to be the first cricketer from outside Australia, invited to deliver the the Bradman Oration. I don't say that only because Sir Don once scored a hundred before lunch at Lord's and my 100 at Lord's this year took almost an entire day.

But more seriously, Sir Don played just five Tests against India; that was in the first India-Australia series in 1947-48, which was to be his last season at home. He didn't even play in India, and remains the most venerated cricketer in India not to have played there.

We know that he set foot in India though, in May 1953, when on his way to England to report on the Ashes for an English newspaper, his plane stopped in Calcutta airport. There were said to be close to a 1000 people waiting to greet him; as you know, he was a very private person and so got into an army jeep and rushed into a barricaded building, annoyed with the airline for having 'breached confidentiality.' That was all Indians of the time saw of Bradman who remains a mythical figure.

For one generation of fans in my country, those who grew up in the 1930s, when India was still under British rule, Bradman represented a cricketing excellence that belonged to somewhere outside England. To a country taking its first steps in Test cricket, that meant something. His success against England at that time was thought of as our personal success. He was striking one for all of us ruled by the common enemy. Or as your country has so poetically called them, the Poms.

There are two stories that I thought I should bring to your notice. On June 28, 1930, the day Bradman scored 254 at Lord's against England, was also the day Jawaharlal Nehru was arrested by the police. Nehru was, at the time, one of the most prominent leaders of the Indian independence movement and later, independent India's first Prime Minister. The coincidence of the two events, was noted by a young boy KN Prabhu, who was both nationalist, cricket fan and later became independent India's foremost cricket writer. In the 30s, as Nehru went in and out of jail, Bradman went after the England bowling and, for KN Prabhu, became a kind of avenging angel.

There's another story I've heard about the day in 1933, when the news reached India that Bradman's record for the highest Test score of 334 had been broken by Wally Hammond. As much as we love our records, they say some Indian fans at the time were not exactly happy. Now, there's a tale that a few even wanted to wear black bands to mourn the fact that this precious record that belonged to Australia - and by extension, us - had gone back. To an Englishman. We will never know if this is true, if black bands were ever worn, but as journalists sometimes tell me, why let facts get in the way of a good story.

My own link with Bradman was much like that of most other Indians - through history books, some old video footage and his wise words. About leaving the game better than you found it. About playing it positively, as Bradman, then a selector, told Richie Benaud before the 1960-61 West Indies tour of Australia. Of sending a right message out from cricket to its public. Of players being temporary trustees of a great game.

While there may be very little similarity in our records or our strike-rates or our fielding - and I can say this only today in front of all of you - I am actually pleased that I share something very important with Sir Don.

He was, primarily, like me, a No.3 batsman. It is a tough, tough job.

We're the ones who make life easier for the kings of batting, the middle order that follows us. Bradman did that with a bit more success and style than I did. He dominated bowling attacks and put bums on seats, if i bat for any length of time I am more likely to bore people to sleep. Still, it is nice to have batted for a long time in a position, whose benchmark is, in fact, the benchmark for batsmanship itself.

Before he retired from public life in his 80s, I do know that Bradman watched Sunil Gavaskar's generation play a series in Australia. I remember the excitement that went through Indian cricket when we heard the news that Bradman had seen Sachin Tendulkar bat on TV and thought he batted like him. It was more than mere approval, it was as if the great Don had finally, passed on his torch. Not to an Aussie or an Englishman or a West Indian. But to one of our own.

One of the things, Bradman said has stayed in my mind. That the finest of athletes had, along with skill, a few more essential qualities: to conduct their life with dignity, with integrity, with courage and modesty. All this he believed, were totally compatible with pride, ambition, determination and competitiveness. Maybe those words should be put up in cricket dressing rooms all over the world.

As all of you know, Don Bradman passed away on February 25, 2001, two days before the India v Australia series was to begin in Mumbai.

Whenever an important figure in cricket leaves us, cricket's global community pauses in the midst of contests and debates, to remember what he represented of us, what he stood for, and Bradman was the pinnacle. The standard against which all Test batsmen must take guard.

The series that followed two days after Bradman's death later went on to become what many believe was one of the greatest in cricket. It is a series, I'd like to believe, he would have enjoyed following.

A fierce contest between bat and ball went down to the final session of the final day of the final Test. Between an Australian team who had risen to their most imposing powers and a young Indian team determined to rewrite some chapters of its own history.

The 2001 series contained high-quality cricket from both sides and had a deep impact on the careers of those who played a part in it. The Australians were near unbeatable in the first half of the new decade, both home and away. As others floundered against them, India became the only team that competed with them on even terms.

India kept answering questions put to them by the Australians and asking a few themselves. The quality demanded of those contests, sometimes acrimonious, sometimes uplifting, made us, the Indian team, grow and rise. As individuals, we were asked to play to the absolute outer limits of our capabilities and we often extended them.

Now, whenever India and Australia meet, there is expectation and anticipation - and as we get into the next two months of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, players on both sides will want to deliver their best.

When we toured in 2007-08, I thought it was going to be my last tour of Australia. The Australians thought it was going to be the last time they would be seeing Sachin Tendulkar on their shores. He received warm standing ovations from wonderful crowds all around the country.

Well, like a few, creaking Terminators, we're back. Older, wiser and I hope improved.

The Australian public will want to stand up to send Sachin off all over again this time. But I must warn you, given how he's been playing these days, there are no guarantees about final goodbyes.

In all seriousness, though, the cricket world is going to stop and watch Australia and India. It is Australia's first chance to defend their supremacy at home following defeat in the 2010 Ashes and a drawn series against New Zealand. It is India's opportunity to prove that the defeat to England in the summer was an aberration that we will bounce back from.

If both teams look back to their last 2007-08 series in Australia, they will know that they should have done things a little differently in the Sydney Test. But I think both sides have moved on from there; we've played each other twice in India already and relations between the two teams are much better than they have been as far as I can remember.

Thanks to the IPL, Indians and Australians have even shared dressing rooms. Shane Watson's involvement in Rajasthan, Mike Hussey's role with Chennai to mention a few, are greatly appreciated back home. And even Shane Warne likes India now. I really enjoyed playing alongside him at Rajasthan last season and can confidently report to you that he is not eating imported baked beans any more.

In fact, looking at him, it seems, he is not eating anything.

It is often said that cricketers are ambassadors for their country; when there's a match to be won, sometimes we think that is an unreasonable demand. After all, what would career diplomats do if the result of a Test series depended on them, say, walking? But, as ties between India and Australia have strengthened and our contests have become more frequent, we realise that as Indian players, we stand for a vast, varied, often unfathomable and endlessly fascinating country.

At the moment, to much of the outside world, Indian cricket represents only two things - money and power. Yes, that aspect of Indian cricket is a part of the whole, but it is not the complete picture. As a player, as a proud and privileged member of the Indian cricket team, I want to say that, this one-dimensional, often cliched image relentlessly repeated is not what Indian cricket is really all about.

I cannot take all of you into the towns and villages our players come from, and introduce you to their families, teachers, coaches, mentors and team-mates who made them international cricketers. I cannot take all of you here to India to show you the belief, struggle, effort and sacrifice from hundreds of people that runs through our game.

As I stand here today, it is important for me to bring Indian cricket and its own remarkable story to you. I believe it is very necessary that cricketing nations try to find out about each other, try to understand each other and the different role cricket plays in different countries, because ours is, eventually, a very small world.

In India, cricket is a buzzing, humming, living entity going through a most remarkable time, like no other in our cricketing history. In this last decade, the Indian team represents more than ever before, the country we come from - of people from vastly different cultures, who speak different languages, follow different religions, belong to all classes of society. I went around our dressing room to work out how many languages could be spoken in there and the number I have arrived at is: 15, including Shona and Afrikaans.

Most foreign captains, I think, would baulk at the idea. But, when I led India, I enjoyed it, I marvelled at the range of difference and the ability of people from so many different backgrounds to share a dressing room, to accept, accommodate and respect that difference. In a world growing more insular, that is a precious quality to acquire, because it stays for life and helps you understand people better, understand the significance of the other.

Let me tell you one of my favourite stories from my Under-19 days, when the India Under-19 team played a match against the New Zealand junior team. We had two bowlers in the team, one from the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh - he spoke only Hindi, which is usually a link language for players from all over India, ahead even of English. It should have been all right, except the other bowler came from Kerala, in the deep south, and he spoke only the state's regional language, Malayalam. Now even that should have been okay as they were both bowlers and could bowl simultaneous spells.

Yet in one game, they happened to come together at the crease. In the dressing room, we were in splits, wondering how they were going to manage the business of a partnership, calling for runs or sharing the strike. Neither man could understand a word of what the other was saying and they were batting together. This could only happen in Indian cricket. Except that these two guys came up with a 100-run partnership. Their common language was cricket and that worked out just fine.

The everyday richness of Indian cricket lies right there, not in the news you hear about million-dollar deals and television rights. When I look back over the 25 years I've spent in cricket, I realise two things. First, rather alarmingly, that I am the oldest man in the game, older to even Sachin by three months. More importantly, I realise that Indian cricket actually reflects our country's own growth story during this time. Cricket is so much a part of our national fabric that as India - its economy, society and popular culture - transformed itself, so did our most-loved sport.

As players we are appreciative beneficiaries of the financial strength of Indian cricket, but we are more than just mascots of that economic power. The caricature often made of Indian cricket and its cricketers in the rest of the world is that we are pampered superstars. Overpaid, underworked, treated like a cross between royalty and rock stars.

Yes, the Indian team has an enormous, emotional following and we do need security when we get around the country as a group. It is also why we make it a point to always try and conduct ourselves with composure and dignity. On tour, I must point out, we don't attack fans or do drugs or get into drunken theatrics. And at home, despite what some of you may have heard, we don't live in mansions with swimming pools.

The news about the money may well overpower all else, but along with it, our cricket is full of stories the outside world does not see. Television rights generated around Indian cricket, are much talked about. Let me tell you what the television - around those much sought-after rights - has done to our game.

A sport that was largely played and patronised by princes and businessmen in traditional urban centres, cities like Bombay, Bangalore, Chennai, Baroda, Hyderabad, Delhi - has begun to pull in cricketers from everywhere.

As the earnings from Indian cricket have grown in the past 2 decades, mainly through television, the BCCI has spread revenues to various pockets in the country and improved where we play. The field is now spread wider than it ever has been, the ground covered by Indian cricket, has shifted.

Twenty seven teams compete in our national championship, the Ranji Trophy. Last season Rajasthan, a state best known for its palaces, fortresses and tourism won the Ranji Trophy title for the first time in its history. The national one-day championship also had a first-time winner in the newly formed state of Jharkand, where our captain MS Dhoni comes from.

The growth and scale of cricket on our television was the engine of this population shift. Like Bradman was the boy from Bowral, a stream of Indian cricketers now come from what you could call India's outback.

Zaheer Khan belongs to the Maharashtra heartland, from a town that didn't have even one proper turf wicket. He could have been an instrumentation engineer but was drawn to cricket through TV and modelled his bowling by practising in front of the mirror on his cupboard at home, and first bowled with a proper cricket ball at the age of 17.

One day out of nowhere, a boy from a village in Gujarat turned up as India's fastest bowler. After Munaf Patel made his debut for India, the road from the nearest railway station to his village had to be improved because journalists and TV crews from the cities kept landing up there.

We are delighted that Umesh Yadav didn't become a policeman like he was planning and turned to cricket instead. He is the first cricketer from the central Indian first-class team of Vidarbha to play Test cricket.

Virender Sehwag, it shouldn't surprise you, belongs to the wild west just outside Delhi. He had to be enrolled in a college which had a good cricket programme and travelled 84kms every day by bus to get to practice and matches.

Every player in this room wearing an India blazer has a story like this. Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the heart and soul of Indian cricket.

Playing for India completely changes our lives. The game has given us a chance to pay back our debt to all those who gave their time, energy and resources for us to be better cricketers: we can build new homes for our parents, get our siblings married off in style, give our families very comfortable lives.

The Indian cricket team is in fact, India itself, in microcosm. A sport that was played first by princes, then their subordinates, then the urban elite, is now a sport played by all of India. Cricket, as my two under-19 team-mates proved, is India's most widely-spoken language. Even Indian cinema has its regional favourites; a movie star in the south may not be popular in the north. But a cricketer? Loved everywhere.

It is also a very tough environment to grow up in - criticism can be severe, responses to victory and defeat extreme. There are invasions of privacy and stones have been thrown at our homes after some defeats.

It takes time getting used to, extreme reactions can fill us with anger. But every cricketer realises at some stage of his career, that the Indian cricket fan is best understood by remembering the sentiment of the majority, not the actions of a minority.

One of the things that has always lifted me as a player is looking out of the team bus when we travelled somewhere in India. When people see the Indian bus going by, see some of us sitting with our curtains drawn back, it always amazes me how much they light up. There is an instantaneous smile, directed not just at the player they see - but at the game we play that, for whatever reason, means something to people's lives. Win or lose, the man on the street will smile and give you a wave.

After India won the World Cup this year, our players were not congratulated as much as they were thanked by people they ran into. "You have given us everything," they were told, "all of us have won." Cricket in India now stands not just for sport, but possibility, hope, opportunities.

On our way to the Indian team, we know of so many of our team-mates, some of whom may have been equally or more talented than those sitting here, who missed out. When I started out, for a young Indian, cricket was the ultimate gamble - all or nothing, no safety nets. No second chances for those without an education or a college degree or second careers. Indian cricket's wealth now means a wider pool of well paid cricketers even at first-class level.

For those of us who make it to the Indian team, cricket is not merely our livelihood, it is a gift we have been given. Without the game, we would just be average people leading average lives. As Indian cricketers, our sport has given us the chance do something worthwhile with our lives. How many people could say that?

This is the time Indian cricket should be flowering; we are the world champions in the short game, and over the space of the next 12 months should be involved in a tight contest with Australia, South Africa and England to determine which one of us is the world's strongest Test team.

Yet I believe this is also a time for introspection within our game, not only in india, but all over the world. We have been given some alerts and responding to them quickly is the smart thing to do.

I was surprised a few months ago to see the lack of crowds in an ODI series featuring India. By that I don't mean the lack of full houses, I think it was the sight of empty stands I found somewhat alarming.

India played its first one-day international at home in November 1981, when I was nine. Between then and now India have played 227 ODIs at home; the October five-match series against England was the first time that the grounds have not been full for an ODI featuring the Indian team.

In the summer of 1998, I played in a one-dayer against Kenya in Kolkata and the Eden Gardens was full. Our next game was held in the 48-degree heat of Gwalior and the stands were heaving.

The October series against England was the first one at home after India's World Cup win. It was called the 'revenge' series meant to wipe away the memory of a forgettable tour of England. India kept winning every game, and yet the stands did not fill up. Five days after a 5-0 victory 95,000 turned up to watch the India's first Formula One race.

A few weeks later I played in a Test match against West Indies in Calcutta, in front of what was the lowest turn out in Eden Gardens' history. Yes we still wanted to win and our intensity did not dip. But at the end of the day, we are performers, entertainers and we love an audience. The audience amplifies everything you are doing, the bigger the crowd the bigger the occasion, its magnitude, its emotion. When I think about the Eden Gardens crowds this year, I wonder what the famous Calcutta Test of 2001 would have felt like with 50,000 people less watching us.

Australia and South Africa played an exciting and thrilling Test series recently and two great Test matches produced some fantastic performances from players of both teams, but were sadly played in front of sparse crowds.

It is not the numbers that Test players need, it is the atmosphere of a Test that every player wants to revel in and draw energy from. My first reaction to the lack of crowds for cricket was that there had been a lot of cricket and so perhaps, a certain amount of spectator-fatigue. That is too simplistic a view; it's the easy thing to say but might not be the only thing.

The India v England ODI series had no context, because the two countries had played each other in four Tests and five ODIs just a few weeks before. When India and West Indies played ODIs a month after that the grounds were full, but this time the matches were played in smaller venues that didn't host too much international cricket. Maybe our clues are all there and we must remain vigilant.

Unlike Australia or England, Indian cricket has never had to compete with other sports for a share of revenues, mind space or crowd attendance at international matches. The lack of crowds may not directly impact on revenues or how important the sport is to Indians, but we do need to accept that there has definitely been a change in temperature over, I think, the last two years.

Whatever the reasons are - maybe it is too much cricket or too little by way of comfort for spectators - the fan has sent us a message and we must listen. This is not mere sentimentality. Empty stands do not make for good television. Bad television can lead to a fall in ratings, the fall in ratings will be felt by media planners and advertisers looking elsewhere.

If that happens, it is hard to see television rights around cricket being as sought after as they have always been in the last 15 years. And where does that leave everyone? I'm not trying to be an economist or doomsday prophet - this is just how I see it.

Let us not be so satisfied with the present, with deals and finances in hand that we get blindsided. Everything that has given cricket its power and influence in the world of sports has started from that fan in the stadium. They deserve our respect and let us not take them for granted. Disrespecting fans is disrespecting the game. The fans have stood by our game through everything. When we play, we need to think of them. As players, the balance between competitiveness and fairness can be tough but it must be found.

If we stand up for the game's basic decencies, it will be far easier to tackle its bigger dangers - whether it is finding short cuts to easy money or being lured by the scourge of spot-fixing and contemplating any involvement with the betting industry.

Cricket's financial success means it will face threats from outside the game and keep facing them. The last two decades have proved this over and over again. The internet and modern technology may just end up being a step ahead of every anti-corruption regulation in place in the game. As players, the one way we can stay ahead for the game, is if we are willing to be monitored and regulated closely.

Even if it means giving up a little bit of freedom of movement and privacy. If it means undergoing dope tests, let us never say no. If it means undergoing lie-detector tests, let us understand the technology, what purpose it serves and accept it. Now lie-detectors are by no means perfect but they could actually help the innocent clear their names. Similarly, we should not object to having our finances scrutinised if that is what is required.

When the first anti-corruption measures were put into place, we did moan a little bit about being accredited and depositing our cell phones with the manager. But now we must treat it like we do airport security because we know it is for our own good and our own security.

Players should be ready to give up a little personal space and personal comfort for this game, which has given us so much. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

Other sports have borrowed from cricket's anti-corruption measures to set up their own ethical governance programmes and we must take pride in belonging to a sport that is professional and progressive.

One of the biggest challenges that the game must respond to today, I believe, is charting out a clear road map for the three formats. We now realise that the sport's three formats cannot be played in equal numbers - that will only throw scheduling and the true development of players completely off gear.

There is a place for all three formats, though, we are the only sport I can think of which has three versions. Cricket must treasure this originality. These three versions require different skills, skills that have evolved, grown, changed over the last four decades, one impacting on the other.

Test cricket is the gold standard, it is the form the players want to play. The 50-over game is the one that has kept cricket's revenues alive for more than three decades now. Twenty20 has come upon us and it is the format people, the fans want to see.

Cricket must find a middle path, it must scale down this mad merry-go-round that teams and players find themselves in: heading off for two-Test tours and seven-match ODI series with a few Twenty20s thrown in.

Test cricket deserves to be protected, it is what the world's best know they will be judged by. Where I come from, nation versus nation is what got people interested in cricket in the first place. When I hear the news that a country is playing without some of its best players, I always wonder, what do their fans think?

People may not be able to turn up to watch Test cricket but everyone follows the scores. We may not fill 65,000 capacity stadiums for Test matches, but we must actively fight to get as many as we can in, to create a Test match environment that the players and the fans feed off. Anything but the sight of Tests played on empty grounds. For that, we have got to play Test cricket that people can watch.

I don't think day-night Tests or a Test championship should be dismissed.

In March of last year I played a day-night first-class game in Abu Dhabi for the MCC and my experience from that was that day-night Tests is an idea seriously worth exploring. There may be some challenges in places where there is dew but the visibility and durability of the pink cricket ball was not an issue.

Similarly, a Test championship, with every team and player driving themselves to be winners of a sought after title, seems like it would have a context to every game.

Keeping Tests alive may mean different innovations in different countries - maybe taking it to smaller cities, playing it in grounds with smaller capacities like New Zealand has thought of doing, maybe reviving some old venues in the West Indies, like the old Recreation Ground in Antigua.

When I was around seven years old, I remember my father taking a Friday off so that we could watch three days of Test cricket together. On occasions he couldn't, I would accompany one of his friends, just to soak in a day of Test cricket and watch the drama slowly unfold.

What we have to do is find a way to ensure that Test matches fit into 21st century life, through timing, environments and the venues they are held in. I am still convinced it can be done, even in our fast-moving world with a short attention span. We will often get told that Test matches don't make financial sense, but no one ever fell in love with Test cricket because they wanted to be a businessman. Not everything of value comes at a price.

There is a proposal doing the rounds about scrapping the 50-over game completely. I am not sure I agree with that - I certainly know that the 50-over game helped us innovate strokes in our batting which we were then able to take into Test matches. We all know that the 50-over game has been responsible for improving fielding standards all over the world.

The future may well lie in playing one-day internationals centered around ICC events, like the Champions Trophy and the World Cups. This would ensure that all 50-over matches would build up for those tournaments.

That will cut back the number of one-day internationals played every year but at least those matches will have context. Since about I think 1985, people have been saying that there is too much meaningless one-day cricket. Maybe it's finally time to do something about it.

The Twenty20 game as we know has as many critics as it has supporters in the public. Given that an acceptable strike rate in T20 these days is about 120, I should probably complain about it the most. The crowd and revenue numbers, though, tell us that if we don't handle Twenty20 correctly, we may well have more and more private players stepping in to offer not just slices of pie, but maybe even bigger pies themselves.

So I'll re-iterate what I've just said very quickly because balancing three formats is important:

We have Test cricket like we have always had, nation versus nation, but carefully scheduled to attract crowds and planned fairly so that every Test playing country gets its fair share of Tests. And playing for a championship or a cup, not just a ranking.

The 50-overs format focused around fewer, significant multi-nation ICC events like the Champions Trophy and the World Cup. In the four-year cycle between World Cups, plan the ODI calendar and devise rankings around these few important events. Anything makes more sense than seven-match ODI series.

The best role for Twenty20 is as a domestic competition through official leagues, which will make it financially attractive for cricketers. That could also keep cricket viable in countries where it fights for space and attention.

Because the game is bigger than us all, we must think way ahead of how it stands today. Where do we want it to be in the year 2020? Or say in 2027, when it will be 150 years since the first Test match was played. If you think about it, cricket has been with us longer than the modern motor car, it existed before modern air travel took off.

As much as cricket's revenues are important to its growth, its traditions and its vibrancy are a necessary part of its progress in the future. We shouldn't let either go because we played too much of one format and too little of the other.

Professionalism has given cricketers of my generation privileged lives and we know it, even though you may often hear us whining about burn-out, travel and the lack of recovery time.

Whenever we begin to get into that mindset, it's good to remember a piece of Sachin's conversation with Bradman. Sachin told us that he had asked Sir Don how he had mentally prepared for big games, what his routines were. Sir Don said, that well, before a game he would go to work and after the game go back to work. Whenever a cricketer feels a whinge coming on, that would be good to remember.

Before I conclude, I also want to talk briefly about an experience I have often had over the course of my career. It is not to do with individuals or incidents, but one I believe is important to share. I have sometimes found myself in the middle of a big game, standing at slip or even at the non-strikers end and suddenly realised that everything else has vanished. At that moment, all that exists is the contest and the very real sense of the joy that comes from playing the game.

It is an almost meditative experience, where you reconnect with the game just like you did years ago, when you first began, when you hit your first boundary, took the first catch, scored your first century, or were involved in a big victory. It lasts for a very fleeting passage of time, but it is a very precious instant and every cricketer should hang on to it.

I know it is utterly fanciful to expect professional cricketers to play the game like amateurs; but the trick, I believe, is taking the spirit of the amateur - of discovery, of learning, of pure joy, of playing by the rules - into our profession. Taking it to practice or play, even when there's an epidemic of white-line fever breaking out all over the field.

In every cricketer there lies a competitor who hates losing, and yes, winning matters. But it is not the only thing that matters when you play cricket. How it is played is as important for every member of every team because every game we play leaves a footprint in cricket's history. We must never forget that.

What we do as professionals is easily carried over into the amateur game, in every way - batting, bowling, fielding, appealing, celebration, dissent, argument. In the players of 2027, we will see a reflection of this time and of ourselves and it had better not annoy or anguish us 50-year-olds.

As the game's custodians, it is important we are not tempted by the short-term gains of the backward step. We can be remembered for being the generation that could take the giant stride.

Thank you for the invitation to address all of you tonight, and your attention.

Riding the news story

2011-12-14T16:34:00.001+05:30

As information explodes at the readers from multiple platforms - newspapers, TV, internet, radio, blogs, facebook, tumblr, and twitter - news organisations are thinking of news ways of staying top of eye-balls and attention spans. The Associated Press recently organised a think-tank meeting on how to stay on top of the news stories. An interesting read on how the AP wants to bring the New Distinctiveness into its working.

AP strategy to go "distinctive" on news From Huffington Post

A new study by Pew's Project has found that twitter, blogs, and social media are harsher on US presidential candidates than the mainstream news media.

Survey shows twitter, blogs harsher on US Prez candidates than mainstream news media From Knight Digital Media Centre

Adolf Hitler at the opening of Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung in 1939 in an archived image

Photo courtesy: The Art Newspaper

New research has brought into focus Nazi-era art which includes some 100,000 photographs compiled in an online catalogue by Munich's Central Institute of Art

Research sheds light on Nazi-era art From The Art Newspaper

In an interesting development, twitter is being used by anti-government fighters, the Al-Shabab fighters, in Somalia. An Al Jazeera reporter interviewed them.

Somalian fighters tweet their way From Al Jazeera English

Happy reading!

Eternal dilemama of a photojournalist

2011-12-12T17:12:00.002+05:30

Picture copyright: Reuters
Taken from Blogs.Reuters.com

Desmond Boylan, whose tenure as the chief photographer in Reuters India office has left many good memories for the Indian photojournalists, faced the eternal dilemma of a photojournalist, perhaps for the nth time in his long and illustrious career. Posted in Cuba now, Boylan was driving his car when life threw a situation at him, and shooting the drama that unfolded before him was never on his mind. Obviously, the veteran photojournalist was busy saving a life. and how. Read the story in his own words...
A photo blog without photos From Reuters Blogs

What happens why a community does not get enough nourishment of information. Veteran editor Tom Stites analyses
News deserts anyone? From Nieman Lab

Judith Puckett-Rinella to take over from Susan White at Vanity Fair from Jan 3, 2012.
Vanity Fair names new photography director From Photo District News

A website which gives you all the data of how your government is spending. Where did the money for clean loos went, for example.
Money for toilets, spent on building kitchens

Giles Duley worked as a fashion photographer for world's top magazines before he went to Afghanistan on an assignment and became a triple amputee. A truly inspiring story. His exhibition "Becoming a Story" opened in London in Nov. From DazedDigital.com
Becoming a Story

CNN lay offs, Fukushima and other stories

2011-12-02T18:20:00.001+05:30

Some interesting links found on twitter. In a shocking development hardly expected from a large news group, CNN has laid off photojournalists citing easy availability of small cameras with HD quality recordings and rise in citizen journalism. CNN runs a citizen journalism initiative called iReport. They have their logic, but it is bad news for photojournalists, whose trained eyes seem to be taken for granted. I mean I have a 16 megapixel aim and shoot with HD quality video recording, but I can't capture a photograph the way a photojournalist can. I can only do fluke, blind recording if I happen to be at the right time at the right place. That too has its value if I am shooting a tsunami coming in, but how can it ever replace the skills of my photojournalist friends. There were hundreds of people and journalists below those towers on 9/11, but the pictures that a James Nachtwey or Steve McCurry or Thomas Hoepker shot stand out because they capture something that is beyond amateur eye. Read on

After 32 years in print, a newsroom veteran jumps to a digital-only job -- From Connecticut Newsroom

The latest IAEA status report on Fukushima Daiichi plant -- From IAEA.org

CNN lays off photojournalists citing increased camera availability -- From Petapixel.com

"People are tired of simple things. They want to be challenged," novelist Umberto Eco tells Stephen Moss of The Guardian in an interview.

Umberto Eco
Photo courtesy: templars.wordpress.com

Domestic Abuse

2011-11-11T21:07:00.001+05:30

I felt like crying after seeing these images by Donna Ferrato put up by NYT's photoblog, Lensblog.
The pictures speak for themselves, and James Estrin's text contextualises Donna's work. A must see for everyone.

Interesting reading

2011-11-08T19:12:00.000+05:30

Hi

Another set of interesting links.

New Yorker magazine's Beijing-based staff writer Evan Osnos writes on the divide between Japan's policymakers and the general public on giving up nuclear power. The context is interesting as India got its former president Abdul Kalam to intervene in protests over Kudankulam nuclear power station and moot a Rs 200 crore plan to boost development around the plant.

Washington Post's Senior News Designer Jon Wile responds to reader's questions on designing the Page One of the newspaper. Interesting insights into what goes on in the news rooms to package the day's news attractively and arrest the rapidly shorterning attention span of readers, who get bombarded with information from multiple sources every day.

An interesting visual take by Boston.com, which uses photographs to narrate news stories, on the Seven Billion population story. This story has wonderful pictures and please don't miss them!

Enjoy reading!

Koudelka takes Prague Spring exhibit to Russia

2011-10-31T20:43:00.000+05:30

Picture copyright: Josef Koudelka/Magnum

Josef Koudelka's iconic image of Russian tanks rolling into Prague

Picture Courtesy: http://www.guardian.co.uk

Czech photojournalist Josef Koudelka, an engineer by training, was shooting gypsies as a personal hobby when he eyewitnessed the Soviet invasion of 1968, and in the process shot some 5000 images in the first week which eventually became a visual record of the act. Russia has denied that it was an invasion, and maintained that its armed forces were helping fellow state. Now Koudelka's exhibition of the 1968 invasion photographs has gone to Moscow for the first time. A fascinating report by Tom Parfitt of the The Guardian

Taking citizen and community journalism a step further, The Guardian will launch n0tice, an open community news platform. Interesting report on NeimanLab

Mumbai largest city, Delhi NCR largest Urban Agglomeration

2011-10-31T18:51:00.001+05:30

Picture Courtesy: http://thegreatindian.tripod.com

INDIA STATS : Million plus cities in India as per Census 2011

The Census 2011, released by the Registrar General of India, has shown that Mumbai continues to be India's largest populated city among its four metros with 10 million plus population. Mumbai has a population of
18,414,288, followed by Delhi - 16,314,838 and Kolkata- 14,112,536.

However, when the metros along with their extended suburbs are considered, Delhi NCR, which includes Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida, Ghaziabad emerged as the largest Urban Agglomeration with a population of 21,753,486, Mumbai Metropolitan Region which comprises of Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane, Vasai-Virar, Bhiwandi, and Panvel emerges second largest with a population of 20,748,395. Urban Agglomeration means an extended city comprising built up area of central core and any suburbs linked by continuous urban area.

Chennai, Hyderabad emerge as the next largest cities followed by Bangalore, Ahmedabad, and Pune. The Census findings show that Surat has added 1.7 million people during the past decade, and Jaipur has pipped Kanpur to the 10th spot. The full table of cities, and their urban agglomerations along with the 2001 Census figures is given below:

		UA 2011	Extended UA 2011	2001 Census
1	Delhi	16,314,838	21,753,486	12,877,470
2	Greater Mumbai	18,414,288	20,748,395	16,434,386
3	Kolkata	14,112,536	14,617,882	13,205,697
4	Chennai	8,696,010	8,917,749	6,560,242
5	Bangalore	8,499,399	8,728,906	5,701,446
6	Hyderabad		7,749,334	5,742,036
7	Ahmedabad	6,240,201	6,352,254	4,525,013
8	Pune		5,049,968	3,760,636
9	Surat		4,585,367	2,811,614
10	Jaipur		3,073,350	2,322,575
11	Kanpur		2,920,067	2,715,555
12	Lucknow		2,901,474	2,245,509
13	Nagpur	2,497,777	2,583,911	2,129,500
14	Ghaziabad (NCR)	2,358,525	(NCR)	968,256
15	Indore		2,167,447	1,506,062
16	Coimbatore		2,151,466	1,461,139
17	Kochi		2,117,990	1,355,972
18	Patna		2,046,652	1,697,976
19	Kozhikode*		2,030,519	880,247
20	Bhopal		1,883,381	1,458,416
21	Thrissur *		1,854,783	330,122
22	Vadodara		1,817,191	1,491,045
23	Agra		1,746,467	1,331,339
24	Vishakhapatnam		1,730,320	1,345,938
25	Malappuram*		1,698,645	170,409
26	Thiruvananthapuram*		1,687,406	889,635
27	Ludhiana		1,613,878	1,398,467
28	Kannur*		1,642,892	498,207
29	Nashik		1,562,769	1,152,326
30	Vijayawada		1,491,202	1,039,518
31	Madurai		1,462,420	1,203,095
32	Varanasi		1,435,113	1,203,961
33	Meerut		1,424,908	1,161,716
34	Faridabad (NCR)	1,404,653	(NCR)	1,055,938
35	Rajkot		1,390,933	1,003,015
36	Jamshedpur		1,337,131	1,104,713
37	Srinagar		1,273,312	988,210
38	Jabalpur		1,267,564	1,098,000
39	Asansol		1,243,008	1,067,369
40	Vasai - Virar (MMR)	1,221,233	(MMR)	…
41	Allahabad		1,216,719	1,042,229
42	Dhanbad		1,195,298	1,065,327
43	Aurangabad		1,189,376	892,483
44	Amritsar		1,183,705	1,003,917
45	Jodhpur		1,137,815	860,818
46	Ranchi		1,126,741	863,495
47	Raipur		1,122,555	700,113
48	Kollam*		1,110,005	380,091
49	Gwalior		1,101,981	865,548
50	Durg-Bhilainagar		1,064,077	927,864
51	Chandigarh		1,025,682	808,515
52	Tiruchirapalli		1,021,717	866,354
53	Kota		1,001,365	703,150

*As per new definition of Urban Agglomeration in Kerala

Some interesting links

2011-09-12T15:48:00.000+05:30

Picture courtesy: blog.nj.com

Some interesting links from the web, twitter and my own newspaper, The Telegraph.

Our Science reporter GS Mudur writes about a mathematical analysis of terror facing India and its response
Game theory-based analysis of terrorism. From The Telegraph, Calcutta

How Young Children Learn about Terrorism and 9/11 From Daily Source

A poignant 9/11 story from New York Times on The Telegraph's international page today
The quiet boy who grew up fast and focused after losing his father to 9/11

The Telegraph's Roving Editor Sankarshan Thakur writes from Kashmir
20-year battle for son who was taken away

Inside NYPD's counter terrorism unit

2011-09-08T22:16:00.001+05:30

The 9/11 tenth anniversary coverage has been exhaustive in the American press. I came across this interesting blog by a Reuters photographer trying to show how the NYPD has adapted and modernised itself since 9/11 to combat all forms of terror attacks. I thought it was especially relevant in the context of the Delhi and Mumbai bombings where Indian authorities appear to be reacting to the attacks rather than pre-empting them.

New York put Vietnam War veteran Raymond Kelly at the helm of NYPD three months after 9/11 for a second tenure as the commissioner and his present tenure is uninterrupted for the past 10 years.Can you compare that with how police officers are appointed in India and how short their tenures are? Kelly has gradually built a powerful anti terrorism unit. It was he who expressed concern about the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai, and took steps to combat this kind of attack at multiple locations. I was stunned to read that NYPD has stationed its officers in 11 other foreign cities. I hope they have one in Pakistan.

There are many things Indian police can learn from NYPD. Just look at their Press Relations page. In today's 24 X 7 media age, the right dissemination of information is also crucial especially during emergencies like terror attacks. Wrong information can get magnified rapidly and lead to a dangerous situation. As an example, I can cite rumours on Nov 28 when the 26/11 siege was still on, and a malicious rumour spread that armed gunmen are roaming around in the city killing people. For nearly an hour, the police made no attempt to deny this information and the rumour kept circulating, leading to panic. I remember a friend of mine ran back to his government office, and the office doors were shut as the rumour said that a gunman was roaming free at CST in broad daylight.

That NYPD has a crack terror unit does not mean that their ordinary crimes are way down. I looked at their crime statistics.

James Nachtwey on 9/11 coverage

2011-09-08T16:50:00.001+05:30

The front page of New York Times
picture courtesy: www.mitchellarchives.com

This is a must read interview for all those who read this blog. James Nachtwey narrates the story of how he landed in New York the night before 9/11 and almost got killed when the North Tower collapsed on him. As a photo journalist, he must have faced these moments a number of time, but what unfolded on 9/11 was so shocking and unbelievable.

I find it incredible that Nachtwey shot 28 film rolls that day, and did not look at the unpublished pictures in 27 of those rolls for 10 years! The photos from the remaining one roll were used by Time Magazine soon after 9/11. Read on

Also see the 1971 picture that Nachtwey shot of the Twin Towers. It has an eerie resemblance to 9/11

A context to Anna Hazare agitation

2011-09-05T17:36:00.001+05:30

Picture courtesy: prithvirajappan.blogspot.com

The Economist has put out this nugget of data that perhaps forms a context to understanding
Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement, its impact, and the government's response or the lack of it. The great middle class is rising rapidly especially in Asia.

But middle classes are not angry enough. Can they bring in change more basic than the candle light angst?

James Nachtwey leaves VII

2011-08-31T20:23:00.001+05:30

I read fleetingly on twitter yesterday that James Nachtwey has left VII Photo Agency of which he was one of the founding members. Therefore, I went to the VII Photo website and found Nachtwey's name missing from the list of photographers. A report in the British Journal of Photography confirmed that the photojournalist has indeed quit the agency. There was, however, no announcement on the VII website.

I have been trying to keep pace with VII team's work over the years. What I find interesting is that they are constantly at the edge of conflict, bringing viewers face-to-face with the socio-economic and political realities across the globe. I have no idea how much role Nachtwey really played in the creative part of VII. I always believed that it was he who started the agency, but Wikipedia says that Gary Knight and John Stanmeyer first thought of setting up the agency and others like Alexandra Boulat, Ron Haviv, Nachtwey joined in.

Four days after VII was formally set up and announced, Nachtwey shot those stunning photographs of the 9/11 collapse which were first published by Time magazine. VII never looked back after this success, and I observed with awe how they developed the agency over last 10 years not just into a creative unit doing important work in visual story telling, but the way they developed and added new sections to the entity.

One day in 2004, when I was working with the Indian Express, I found a white man chatting with our photo chief Neeraj Priyadarshi in the photo dept. My friend A Srinivas who was outside the cabin whispered J-a-m-e-s-N-a-c-h-t-w-e-y, and I really thought he was joking. What would Nachtwey be doing in the Express photo dept? Seconds later, I was speechless as Nachtwey turned and came out. I was tongue tied as I shook hands with him. He was dressed in a cool spotless white shirt and blue denims, and was so simple and modest. It was Srinivas' idea to present him an Indian Express annual photo book that the group brought out in 2000 or so, and take his autograph on another copy of the book. Nachtwey signed it, but also insisted that all of us sign his copy of the book. Though I don't think he enjoyed the "celebrity" status being bestowed upon him, he happily posed for a photograph with all of us. I chased him the next whole day for an interview, but he persistently refused. He was here to shoot photos for a magazine assignment on great Indian railway, and wanted to shoot the Mumbai trains.

Nachtwey is apparently setting up his own studio, according to the newsreport. Whatever he will do next, I am sure he will bring in an element of the extraordinary. Much like his pictures.

HCB

2011-08-26T16:59:00.000+05:30

Henri Cartier-Bresson and his work has always amazed me. One man with a tiny Leica camera shooting with a 50 mm lens and always in black and white has captured so much before he moved back to his first love of painting. His portraits amaze me even more because he has got so many wonderful people on film for posterity.
In the above pictures, the wonderful painting like portrait of Kashmiri women at the crack of dawn was the first ever picture of HCB that I saw at an exhibition Leica Cameras brought to Mumbai's Piramal Gallery way back in 1993-94. Then on thanks to my photojournalist friends Soumitra Ghosh and Vikas Khot, I got a chance to see more of Bresson's work through a series of HCB's books.
That HCB is also seen as a street photographer is interesting. 10 Things Henri Cartier Bresson Can Teach You About Street Photography gives a glimpse of this perspective.

Iconic London Riots Image

2011-08-11T21:54:00.001+05:30

Picture copyright: Amy Weston/WENN

This image shot by Amy Weston has become the iconic image of the London riots. Read an interview with Amy Weston done by The Guardian describing how she shot the photograph.

Text of CAG report on Adarsh Scam

2011-08-09T22:05:00.002+05:30

The report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India on the Adarsh Housing Society scam was tabled in Parliament today. The 52-page report details how the politician-bureaucrat nexus perpetrated the scam, and makes some strong observations. Do read.

Some interesting links

2011-08-01T18:18:00.003+05:30

Some interesting links from my twitter reading.

Georgia O'Keeffe and her hands by Alfred Stieglitz

Photo-courtesy: wikipedia.org

From 1915 until 1946, some 25,000 pieces of paper were exchanged between two major 20th-century artists. Painter Georgia O'Keeffe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz wrote each other letters. From NPR.org

Matt Black's photographs from the mountains of rural Mexico. From Guernica Magazine

A film by Drea Cooper & Zackary Canepari. From Panos Pictures

A city's hard edges, softened by Joy. From NYT's blog, Lens

Photographer Daniel Berehulak revisits Pak a year after floods displaced 4 million people. From Getty Images

Happy Reading and Viewing!

Some more poems...

2011-07-28T16:39:00.000+05:30

Coming and Going

Muddy November:
stained stone, bruised bone,
uncertain palaces.

I crossed through arches and over bridges,
I was alive, in search of life.

In a lunar room
the light lost its blood. Fish-men
exchanged cold reflections.

I was alive and saw many ghosts,
all made of flesh and bone, all of them greedy.

Tower of topaz and blood,
black tresses and amber breasts,
the subterranean lady.

Tiger, heifer, octopus, ivy in flames:
she burned my bones, sucked my blood.

Bed an extinct planet,
night and body a mirror-trick,
lady a mountain of salt.

- From Salamander
The Collected poems of Octavio Paz

The sun of the high plains eats my remains:
I was alive and went in search of death.

Some more poems...

2011-07-26T16:55:00.001+05:30

Last Dawn

Your hair lost in the forest,
your feet touching mine.
Asleep you are bigger than the night,
but your dream fits within this room.
How much we are who are so little!
Outside a taxi passes
with its load of ghosts.
The river that runs by
is always
running back.

Will tomorrow be another day?

---------------*** ----------------------

Image copyright: Flintarts.org

Interior

Warring thoughts try
to split my skull

This writing moves
through streets of birds

My hand thinks out loud
a word calls to another

On this page where I write
I see beings that come and go

The book and the notebook
unfold their wings and rest

The lamps are lit the hour
opens and closes like a bed

With red stockings and a pale face
you and the night come in

- From Salamander
The Collected poems of Octavio Paz
1957-1987
Edited by Eliot Weinberger

Of past forever arriving...

2011-06-01T16:10:00.001+05:30

Picture courtesy: conferenceonoctaviopaz.blogspot.com

My favourite poet Octavio Paz would love this. India had a profound influence on Paz, and he began writing what he called circular poems. Words, meaning floating in open space. Like patios, and cobble-stoned paths, shadows, and labyrinths, things coming back to oneself is a common theme in his poems. He opens his long poem, Sunstone (a part of which you will find on this blog) with:

a crystal willow, a poplar of water,
a tall fountain the wind arches over,
a tree deep-rooted yet dancing still,
a course of a river that turns, moves on,
doubles back, and comes full circle,
forever arriving:

Some 18 years ago, I gifted Paz's Collected Poems to a friend and a former colleague who now lives on the other side of the planet. The fellow traveller sent a copy of the same book to me this afternoon as my 40th birthday gift after I told her that I have always gifted this wonderful volume, never owned one. Moving my fingers on the 663 page tome edited by Eliot Weinberger gave me a sense of deja vu. A sense of time gone by. A sense of memory. What Paz would call the labyrinth of memory! (His collection The Labyrinth of Solitude catapulted him into international scene)

In other words, friends, you are going to read more of Octavio Paz's poems on this blog since now I own a copy. So some more of Paz poems coming your way...Thanks fellow traveller!

With Eyes Closed

With eyes closed
you light up within
you are blind stone

Night after night I carve you
with eyes closed
you are frank stone

We have become enormous
just knowing each other
with eyes closed.

Landscape

Rock and precipice,
more time than stone, this
timeless matter

Through its cicatrices
falls without moving
perpetual virgin water.

Immensity reposes here
rock on rock,
rocks over air.

The world's manifest
as it is: a sun
immobile, in the abyss.

Scale of vertigo:
the crags weigh
no more than our shadows

Googling around, I found a wonderfully detailed interview with Octavio Paz on The Paris Review. Do read.

Grant for Asian photographers

2011-05-27T18:39:00.000+05:30

This is a wonderful opportunity for documentary photographers from India. Read on:

Reminders Project and the Angkor Photo Festival with the purpose of providing financial support to emerging Asian photographers is seeking entries of projects that demonstrate a commitment to the subjects they work on, with a aim to make a positive impact on the local community.

In recent times, more and more Asian photographers are emerging onto the international scene, producing work of outstanding calibre and giving exposure to little known issues from their region or their own countries.

However, one of the biggest obstacles faced by these photographers is the difficulty of finding financial funding to support their projects. In-depth, investigative work requires long periods of research, and without help, many of these projects cannot be realized. Understanding the need for recognizing and supporting such projects, this completion is being organized to bring the unseen works of Asian Photographers to the world stage.

Award Components
+ Financial support of up to US$3,000 for a photo project
+ The awarded project will be shown at the 2012 Angkor Photo Festival
Eligibility Criteria
This grant is open to projects fitting the following criteria:
+ An in-depth photographic documentation in Asia
+ Explores critical issues in Asia which are unknown or under-reported
+ The project must make a positive impact on the local community and help vocalize the issues at the grassroots, local community or NGO level.
Judging Process

Representatives from Reminders Project and the Angkor Photo Festival will review applications, which will then be judged by a jury panel consisting of five international photography professionals.

The jury will take into consideration:
+ The strength of the photographer’s photography portfolio.
+ How closely the proposed project adheres to the Project Criteria and to the grant’s mission.
Last date for submitting the entries is July 29, 2011
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RIP Badal Sircar

2011-05-21T16:27:00.001+05:30

Picture copyright and courtesy: Natarang Pratishthan (www.naratang,org)

The Outsider: Badal Sircar (1925-2011)

Badal Sircar remained, in many ways, the outsider in Indian theatre, writes Sudhanva Deshpande

He was a prolific playwright, author or more than 50 plays, and the winner of several awards, including the Sangeet Natak Akademi award and the Padmashri. Ebong Indrajeet (Evam Indrajeet, ‘And Indrajeet’, 1963) and Pagla Ghoda (‘Mad Horse’, 1967) are undisputed classics of the modern Indian stage, translated into several languages and performed across the country. They blazed a trail, and opened new vistas. Badal Sircar was a playwright of great power and technical sophistication. Playwrights and directors we consider masters today – Shombhu Mitra, Girish Karnad, Satyadev Dubey, B.V. Karanth, among others – acknowledged their artistic debt to Badal Sircar. Girish Karnad, for instance, says that he learnt about the fluidity of form from Pagla Ghoda, and Satyadev Dubey says that every play he has done after directing Evam Indrajeet has the shadow of this masterpiece on it.

And yet, when he was at the peak of his creativity, hailed as a modern master, Badal Sircar quit and went away.

He didn’t quit writing, and he didn’t go away from theatre. He quit being a ‘playwright’, and abandoned the urban proscenium stage of psychological realism and the box set, a theatre that showcased the actor and pandered to his ego. That sort of theatre often became, in effect, a vehicle for the actor to show off. In Bengal, the urban proscenium theatre was also overtly verbose. When an actor of the calibre of Shombhu Mitra was on stage, no one minded, because it was a pleasure to listen to him deliver Tagore’s or Badal Sircar’s lines. With his level of virtuosity, you almost felt it was right to show off. It became a drag when lesser actors pretended they had the stuff.

But then, what was the alternative? Sircar couldn’t simply have embraced the rural theatre. He was city-bred, and he did not want to be an imposter in the rural theatre. So he created what he called the ‘Third Theatre’. This was a theatre that lived and breathed among the common people, that spoke of their lives, that cried their tears and dreamed their dreams. This was theatre for social change. Later, he preferred the term ‘free theatre’ to ‘Third Theatre’. Not only was this term less confrontationist, it was also more accurate.

In the early seventies, the world, especially Bengal, was in turmoil, and this is the turmoil Sircar captured with such precision in his third classic, Michhil (Juloos, ‘Procession’, 1972). He had already formed his theatre group Satabdi, in 1967. Sircar and Satabdi performed their plays anywhere – in large rooms or halls, in the open, in fields, in parks and gardens. This was ‘free’ theatre. It required no ticket to see it, and it required very little money to do. More importantly, it was free in the sense of being free of constraints and obligations. It was insolent, unafraid to speak its mind.

What this theatre did require, though, was imagination. Too much of what goes in the name of ‘street theatre’ (particularly today, when the NGOs have appropriated the form to a great extent) is patronising, artistically weak, imaginatively barren and plain boring. Sircar’s theatre was never barren, intellectually or aesthetically. You might or might not agree with him, but you could not dismiss his theatre. In plays such as Bashi Khobor (Basi Khabar, ‘Stale News’, 1978) and Bhoma (1979), Satabdi created some of the finest instances of ‘physical theatre’ in India.

In other words, in Sircar’s work, writing, directing, and acting in plays became seamless parts of the larger process of creating theatre. And while he continued writing plays, the act of creating theatre involved, more and more, the reconfiguration of the performance space, and manipulation of actors’ bodies and voices to create meaning. Dialogue within the group became for him as important as dialogue in the play and dialogue with the audience.

Satabdi began performing in a room on the second floor of the Academy of Fine Arts three days a week. The room could take about 60-70 spectators, and was named ‘Angan Mancha’ (‘Space Theatre’) by Sircar. A few months after Angan Mancha came into being, Sircar learnt of theatre taking place in Surendranath Park (formerly Curzon Park) in the centre of the city. A theatre group named Silhouette had started this, and this became Satabdi’s venue as well. Initially, Sircar was sceptical about the audience taking to his plays, which were more complex and sophisticated than the average street theatre being performed there. But he was to be surprised. Over time, a serious and regular theatre going audience developed at Surendranath Park.

Ideologically, it is a little hard to characterise Badal Sircar’s theatre. He started with light hearted comedies (Ballabhpurer Rupkatha being the best known, and is still popular), then went on to express the angst and rootlessness of the urban middle class in his classic plays, and eventually, in his post-proscenium phase, he became more consciously anti-establishment.

However, a certain sort of political ambivalence is inscribed into his plays and in fact into his dramaturgy itself – in the sense that the non-verbal can just as easily ‘flatten’ meaning and equalise opposites. His theatre could was, variously, angry, nihilist, hopeful and deeply humanist. I am not being pejorative when I say that Badal Sircar’s theatre reflected a certain ‘middle class’ view of life. In fact, it could be argued that this was the result of his deep honesty and self-reflexivity. He didn’t delude himself that he could, in some magical way, transcend his class roots simply by mouthing radical slogans. In talking about his creative journey, he recounts the following:

‘But should we make a play on the Santhal revolt of 1855-56, taking roles of Santhals and the oppressors? The answer was – no. Then what? We shall show it from our point of view, that is, the point of view of a contemporary person belonging to the city-bred, educated middle class community. Why? Because we want to link that revolt to the present-day reality.’[1]

Sircar’s relations with the organised left remained awkward at best. Utpal Dutt, Sircar’s near exact contemporary and member of the CPI (M), hardly ever spoke kindly of Third Theatre. Perhaps because he was familiar with Dutt’s style, which was somewhat robust and highly polemical, to the best of my knowledge, Sircar didn’t respond to Dutt in kind. Some of his less patient followers did, however, and the mutual suspicion hardened over the years. This was unfortunate, because Sircar made a tremendous contribution by taking quality theatre to non-formal spaces. He was a key figure in what Safdar Hashmi called the ‘democratisation of Indian theatre’.

Above all, what Badal Sircar did was to seed practice and train practitioners. This is a part of his legacy that has not been appreciated enough. But through the 1970s, he travelled all over the country, holding workshops in the techniques he was exploring. The Kannada left-wing theatre group Samudaya (the theatre director Prasanna was associated with it, as was, though not so centrally, Karanth) invited Satabdi for a performance, and followed it up with a two week workshop with Sircar in Kumbulgod. This led directly to Samudaya taking up street theatre in 1978. Samudaya went on to become one of the finest exponents of street theatre in the coming years.

Or take the case of the Manipuri director, H. Kanhailal. Expelled from the National School of Drama because he couldn’t manage either the ‘high’ Hindi expected of him, nor very good English, Kanhailal found his own unique idiom after a workshop with Sircar. It was Sircar who introduced the non-verbal, physical idiom to Manipuri theatre. Sircar had got the psycho-physical exercises of the avant-garde Euro-American theatre from the Polish director and theorist Jerzy Grotowsky. In 1972, Sircar performed four of his plays in Imphal. Kanhailal saw these, and the following year he spent nearly a month in Kolkata, learning these exercises.

Eventually, though, the student in some ways rejected the teacher. But this was not a simple rejection. Kanhailal learnt from Sircar that to express complex issues and thoughts through theatre, one had to be neither a prisoner of the frills of the proscenium stage, nor of verbose playscripts. An empty space was enough, if the actors’ bodies were expressive, and the spectators’ imaginations could be fired. In a word, Sircar gave Kanhailal the confidence to find his own voice.

But soon, Kanhailal moved away from psycho-physical exercises. The Bengali actor needed to be ‘freed’ from his/her social inhibitions, so that s/he could begin using the body truly expressively. The Manipuri actor was the product of a different cultural milieu. S/he was physically less inhibited, and more athletic and flexible. Then there were other sorts of cultural conditioning. While Sircar encouraged – even demanded – a strong eye contact between the actors and with the audience, in Manipur, eye contact was something of a taboo. But even though he eventually moved away from psycho-physical training, there is no doubt that Sircar had unlocked the founts of Kanhailal’s creativity. Kanhailal’s extraordinary work, including early classics such as Pebet, Memoirs of Africa and, later, Draupadi and Dakghar, could not have been possible without Sircar’s defining influence.

It is an irony that while Sircar’s plays for the proscenium stage remain justly well-known, his post-proscenium career is hazy in the minds of theatre lovers. But perhaps that is how he wished it. He was a man who had walked away from the spotlight. Many think he spent his last years in a sort of retirement and that Satabdi had become defunct. Neither is true. About a decade before his death, Sircar had an accident, which had severe implications on his physical ability to act in or direct plays. What he achieved, though, was to enter into creative, nurturing collaborative relationships with other theatre groups active in and around Kolkata. Some of these groups folded up fast, but two had a long life – Ayna (founded 1978) and Pathasena (founded 1979). Both these groups considered Sircar their mentor, and he played an active role in training them, and sometimes also directing plays for them.

His last years were spent, by all accounts, in some financial difficulty. While some festivals and groups did confer awards upon him, he got no institutional support. We as a nation must hang our heads in shame at this. Too many artists who have played defining roles in the creation of modern India have died in need.

Badal Sircar went the day the Left Front lost. For all his differences with the left, I am not sure he would have relished the prospect of anti-communists coming to power in West Bengal. He timed his exit perfectly.

‘End of an era’ is a cliché. I never met him, but he was a moral compass. He embodied everything that drew me to left wing theatre – the inventiveness of the form, its rough texture, the ability to say a lot with very little, an unwavering commitment to the people, smell of the earth, and of the rain. Habib Tanvir died in 2009, and now Badal Sircar. The touchstones are gone.

(Sudhanva Deshpande is an actor and director with Jana Natya Manch, and works as editor with LeftWord Books. He can be reached at sudhanva@leftword.com)

[1] Badal Sircar, Voyages in the Theatre, New Delhi 1993, p. 37. For a detailed analysis of Sircar’s theatre till the early 1980s, see Rustom Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution: The Political Theatre of Bengal, Calcutta 1983. A good analysis of his later years can be found in Shayoni Mitra, ‘Badal Sircar: Scripting a Movement’, The Drama Review, 48, 3, Fall 2004. For Sircar’s influence on Kanhailal, see Rustom Bharucha, The Theatre of Kanhailal: Pebet and Memoirs of Africa, Calcutta 1992. For his influence on Samudaya, see Narendar Pani, Staging a Change, Bangalore 1979, and Rati Bartholomew, ‘Samudaya’s Jatha, Karnataka’, How, 6, 1-2, 1983.

(This tribute is reproduced here with the consent of the writer)

A Raja and the 2G Spectrum Scam timeline

2011-05-20T17:09:00.000+05:30

                                                                  Picture courtesy: www.24allworldnews.com

A Delhi court today sent DMK chief Karunanidhi's poet daughter and MP Kanimozhi and Kalaignar TV MD Sharad Kumar to jail in the 2G Spectrum scam case. They join former Telecom Minister A Raja on a day Time magazine put A Raja on the top ten list people who abused power.

The following is the timeline of how the 2G Spectrum Scam came a full circle. The timeline is courtesy PTI:

     May 2007: A Raja takes over as Telecom Minister.
     Aug 2007: Process of allotment of 2G Spectrum for telecom along with Universal Access Service (UAS) Licences initiated by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
     Sept 25, 2007: Telecom Ministry issues press note fixing deadline for application as October 1, 2007.
     Oct 1, 2007: DoT receives 575 applications for UAS licences of 46 companies.
     Nov, 2007: The Prime Minister writes to Raja directing him to ensure 2G spectrum allotment in a fair and transparent manner and to ensure licence fee was properly revised. Raja writes back to the PM rejecting many of his recommendations.
     Nov, 2007: Finance Ministry writes to DoT raising concerns over the procedure adopted by it. Demand for review rejected.
    Jan, 2008: DoT decides to issue licences on first-come- first-serve basis, preponing the cut-off date to September 25, from October 1, 2007. Later on the same day, DoT announces on its website saying those who apply between 3.30 and 4.30 pm would be issued licences in accordance with the said policy.
     2008: Swan Telecom, Unitech and Tata Teleservices sell off a part of their stakes at much higher rates to Etisalat, Telenor and DoCoMo respectively.
     May 4, 2009: An NGO Telecom Watchdog files complaint to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) on the illegalities in the spectrum allocation to Loop Telecom.
     May 19, 2009 : Another complaint was filed to the CVC by one Arun Agarwal, highlighting grant of spectrum to Swan Telecom at throw away prices. CVC directs CBI to investigate the irregularities in allocation of 2G spectrum.
     July 1, 2009: Delhi HC holds advancing of cut-off date as illegal on a petition of telecom company S-Tel.
     Oct 21, 2009: CBI registers a case and files an FIR against "unknown officers of DoT and unknown private persons/ companies under various provisions of IPC and Prevention of Corruption Act.
     Oct 22, 2009: CBI raids DoT offices.
     Nov 16, 2009: CBI seeks details of tapped conversation of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia to find out involvement of middlemen in the grant of spectrum to telecom companies.
     Mar 31, 2010: CAG says that there was large scale irregularities in the spectrum allocation.
     Apr 2, 2010: CBI DIG Vineet Agarwal and DG IT Milap Jain, who were investigating the case, transferred.
     May 6, 2010: Telephonic conversation between Raja and Niira Radia made public by the media.
     May, 2010: NGO Centre for Public Interest litigation moves Delhi High Court seeking investigation into the scam by SIT or CBI.
     May 25, 2010: Delhi HC dismisses the petition.
     Aug 2010: Appeal filed in the Supreme Court against the High Court's order.
     Aug 18, 2010: HC refuses to direct the Prime Minister to decide on a complaint by Janata Party chief Swamy seeking sanction to prosecute Raja for his involvement in 2G scam.
     Sept 13, 2010: SC asks government, Raja to reply within 10 days to three petitions filed by CPIL and others alleging there was a Rs 70,000 crore scam in the grant of telecom licences in 2008.
     Sept 24, 2010: Swamy moves SC seeking direction to the PM to sanction prosecution of Raja.
     Sept 27, 2010: Enforcement Directorate informs SC of probe against firms suspected to have violated FEMA. Says can't deny or confirm now Raja's involvement in the scam.
     Oct 8, 2010: SC asks government to respond to CAG report about the scam.
     Oct 21, 2010: Draft reports of CAG placed before Supreme Court.
     Oct 29, 2010: SC pulls up CBI for its tardy progress in the investigations into the scam.
     Nov 10, 2010: CAG submits report on 2G spectrum to government stating loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to exchequer.
     Nov 11, 2010: DoT files affidavit in SC saying CAG did not have the authority to question the policy decision as per which licence were issued to new players in 2008.
     Nov 14, 2010: Raja resigns as Telecom Minister
     Nov 15, 2010: Kapil Sibal given additional charge of Telecom Ministry.
     Nov 20, 2010: Affidavit on behalf of PM filed in SC. Rejects charge of inaction on Swamy's complaint.
     Nov 22, 2010: CBI tells SC it will file chargesheet in the case within three months.
     Nov 22, 2010: CBI tells SC role of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia would be examined by it.
     Nov 24, 2010: SC reserves verdict on Swamy's plea seeking direction to PM for grant of sanction to prosecute Raja.
     Nov 25, 2010: SC ticks off CBI for not questioning Raja.
     Nov 29, 2010: CBI files status report on 2G spectrum scam probe.
     Nov 30, 2010: SC questions CVC P J Thomas's moral right to supervise CBI's probe into 2G spectrum scam as he himself was Telecom Secretary at that point of time.
     Dec 1, 2010: SC directs original tapes containing conversation between corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and others be handed over to it.
Dec 1, 2010: Raja questions CAG findings in the SC.
     Dec 2, 2010: Government places recorded tapes in the SC.
     Dec 2, 2010: SC comes down heavily on Raja for bypassing and overruling PM's advice to defer allocation of 2G spectrum by a few days.
     Dec 8, 2010: SC favours including in the probe period since 2001 when first-come-first-serve was the norm for spectrum allocation.
     Dec 8, 2010: SC asks Centre to consider setting up of a special court to try 2G spectrum scam case.
     Dec 8, 2010: ED submits report. Says money trail covers 10 countries, including Mauritius.
     Dec 14, 2010: Another PIL in SC seeking cancellation of new telecom licences and 2G spectrum allocated during Raja's tenure.
     Dec 15, 2010: Swamy files petition in a Delhi court seeking his inclusion as a public prosecutor in 2G spectrum case.
     Dec 15, 2010: Swamy mentions in complaint that Raja favoured "ineligible" private companies Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd and Unitech Wireless Ltd in allocating the spectrum.
     Jan 4, 2011: Swamy moves SC seeking cancellation of 2G spectrum licences.
     Jan 10, 2011: Supreme Court issues notice to Centre on the plea seeking cancellation of 2G licenses. Also issues notices to 11 companies which allegedly did not fulfill the roll-out obligations or were in eligible.
     Jan 30, 2011: Government's decision to regularise licences of the companies which failed to meet the deadline for roll-out obligation challenged in the Supreme Court.
     Feb 2, 2011: Raja, former Telecom Secretary Siddartha Behura and Raja's former Personal Secretary R K Chandolia arrested and next day they were remanded in CBI custody.
     Feb 8, 2011: Raja remanded to two more days of CBI custody. Behura and Chandolia sent to judicial custody.
     Feb 8, 2011: Shahid Usman Balwa, promoter of Swan Telecom, arrested by CBI.
     Feb 10, 2011: SC asks the CBI to bring under its scanner corporate houses which were beneficiaries of the 2G spectrum. Raja remanded to CBI custody for four more days by a special CBI court along with Balwa.
     Feb 14, 2011: Raja's CBI custody extended for three more days. Balwa's custody extended for four days.
     Feb 17, 2011: Raja sent to Tihar Jail under judicial custody.

Feb 18, 2011: Balwa sent to Judicial custody.
     Feb 24, 2011: CBI tells Delhi Court that Balwa facilitated transaction to Kalaignar TV.
     Feb 28, 2011: Raja seeks judicial proceedings through video conferencing stating that he faces threat to life from fellow prisoners.
     Mar 1, 2011: CBI tells SC that 63 persons are under scanner. Raja allowed by CBI court to appear before it via video conferencing.
     Mar 14, 2011: The Delhi High Court sets up special court to deal exclusively with 2G cases. Balwa also allowed to appear via video conferencing.
     Mar 29, 2011: SC permits CBI to file charge sheet on April 2 instead of March 31. Two more persons--Asif Balwa and Rajeev Agarwal arrested.
     Apr 2, 2011: The CBI files its first charge sheet in the 2G spectrum allocation scam.
     Apr 25, 2011: CBI files second charge sheet and court issues summons to Kanimozhi, Sharad Kumar and Karim Morani taking congizance of the charge sheet.
     May 6, 2011: Kanimozhi and Sharad Kumar appears before court and files bail pleas while Morani sought exemption from appearance on medical ground.
     May 7, 2011: Court reserves order on Kanimozhi and Sharad Kumar's bail applications.
     May 14, 2011: Court defers order on their bail pleas for May 20.
     May 20, 2011: Court rejects bail pleas of Kanimozhi and Sharad Kumar and orders their forthwith arrest.

Leica Camera blog and other stories

2011-05-17T17:34:00.001+05:30

Picture Copyright: Paul Szynol

Picture Courtesy: Leica Camera Blog

My apologies. I admit I have largely turned into a twitter link aggregator these days. But, twitter is really offering some extremely interesting stuff to read. So, this week's random reading has the following:

Some Place Else: Paul Szynols on Poland From Leica Camera Blog

Interview with Justin Guariglia, Nat Geo Travel Mag photog From Leica Camera Blog

Rape epidemic in Congo: a rape every 48 hours From Foreign Policy Blog

Portrait of a Fugivtive Micro-Manager From Propublica.org

Cartier Bresson on street photography From Invisible Photographer Asia

Iconic picture of the 9/11

Picture Copyright: Thomas Hoepker

Picture Courtesy: Leica Camera Blog

Thomas Hoepker Interview From Leica Camera Blog

Happy Reading!