कुछ मेरी कलम से - २

*ज़िया-ए-हुस्न का उनके है किस-किस को पता नहीं
संवर के जब निकलते वो तो चाँद भी निकलता नहीं (The idea of this couplet and the poem itself came on seeing someone on a moonless night :))

जितना भी याद करो न होगी उनकी जुस्तजू कम
कितना भी समझाओ दिल को फिर भी समझता नहीं

होना चाहें खुदा से खफा तो भला कैसे हो हम
देता है जो मागो वो मगर उनको ही बस देता नहीं

नहीं मिलते हैं तो क्या ख्वाब में तो आतें हैं वो
खफा तो बहुत हैं उनसे हम लेकिन *अफसुर्दा नहीं

चहरे तो लाख़ों हैं दुनिया में दिल लगाने को लेकिन
तुझ दुश्मन-ए-जाँ के सिवा हमें कोई मिलता नहीं

*फ़न-ए-शायरी हासिल नहीं फिर क्यों लिखते हो 'मनु'?
दूसरों की शायरी से हमारा दिल अब बहलता नहीं

- मनु चतुर्वेदी

*ज़िया means splendor
*अफसुर्दा means depressed
*फ़न means talent (The concept for the last couplet might be subconsciously inspired by Siyaah's)

A novel writing approach

I had almost forgotten about the great Chetan Bhagat. Only yesterday when I was at my relatives’ and saw that he has started coming in TV ads did I think of writing this post. He, I think, should be the most well-known novelist in India. If you ever decide on writing a novel, here are some points which you can learn from his success:

Target the youth.

Include the name of elite institute(s): Adding an elite institute’s name in the punch line of your book if not the title usually helps in the sale of the book. If your fertile mind cannot come up with such a title or a punch line, one of your characters can be a student or an alumnus, though this would greatly reduce the effect. The reason is, this gets you a set of assured readers, largely comprising of the candidates preparing for the entrance. You can see this approach has been followed by:
Anything for you Mam- An IITian’s love story
Five Point Someone- What not to do at IIT!
Zero Percentile: Missed IIT Kissed Russia

Keep it small, cheap and simple: It very important to keep the novel small. The youth which is to be targeted is generally busy in other amusing pursuits and doesn’t have time and patience to read pothis. Also, the language of the novel should not be abstruse; of course there should be some unnecessary GRE words to prove writer’s command over the language here and there, but just in the right amount. Ignorant Indian writers like Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie etc. overlook this point while writing their books- there are a lot of other points also which they overlook- and this amounts to a considerable decrease in the sales. And of course, the novel should be cheap, the youth should not mind buying it over burrowing it. (Don’t try to go for international readers also and get a foreign publisher.)
All Chetan Bhagat ‘s are for almost Rs. 100.

Write in English: Ignore it when people say that language is just a mode of communication. It isn’t in India. However good a command you have over your mother tongue, you should stick to English. Indians in general believe that English is the language of the learned and reading English novels is a good way of showing that one is learned which, at times might be the only reason for reading the book. However, when your novel is popular enough, you can get it translated to other regional languages and you would see a flurry of sales.
Five Point Someone was translated to Hindi and had a record breaking sale of 30000 copies in one month. (while 'Raag Darbari' is unheard of, :()

Write about appealing, general topics: Do you remember what the great MBA Chetan Bhagat’s novels are about?
Five Point Someone: College life; IIT (IIT/IIM sells better than IAS (heard of ‘English, August’?!))
1 Night @ the Call Center: Call center
The 3 Mistakes of My Life: Cricket
2 States: Romance
See how cleverly the subjects are chosen? Has he ever written about anything esoteric?! He never fails to add a love affair- if the whole novels itself isn’t about it. Romance is an indispensable ingredient to the novel.

Promote controversy, but only a little: It should not be fatal like it was in Salman Rushdie’s case, but a little bit of it helps. For starters, you can try having regionalist insults which can be covered up in the preface or a post-script.

Get an MBA: Getting an MBA of course helps a lot. There are a lot of other factors, that help selling your novel, which yours truly cannot comprehend and can only be conceived by an MBA.

The post is not an attempt at defaming CB, I am just awe-struck by his systematic approach to sell his novels. It’s just a collection of observations made by my deranged mind.

Reminiscence

Now that I am done with my DDP thesis submission and expect that the review committee would not see any hope of improvement in my incompetence and let me off the institute, other avenues like blogging await the show of my worthlessness. Today, I wish to recount a curious incident which happened in the first year of my college and how it affected my life.

It was a usually dull sultry afternoon of Chennai. I was in high spirits, the kind one is in when he's recently cracked the JEE and knows nothing about the placement season that awaits him in his final year, which in my case was 2009. One very 'influential' senior caught me, he lived on our floor. The seniors in our first year used to catch freshers generally to get water, get xeroxes, catch other freshers etc. Only the very 'trusted' got the privilege to be sent for booze, cigarettes and the other important items. I fell in the 'trusted' category I reckon for I was sent for cigarettes many times. But, that particular day, I was sent for getting some A4 papers, with the usual cigarettes of course.

I was unexpectedly fast at getting them. The senior was 'impressed'. First, moved by my sincerity in getting the stuff, he offered me the much coveted vol-ship for Shaastra. But, when I seemed uninterested, he lit his recently gotten cigarette in Godfather style, and started, as we call the phenomenon here, 'putting me fundaes'.

(To the readers who have read till here, I respect your forbearance and request you to not write any discouraging comments). I was confronted with a philosophical question, often addressed to one when one is new at IIT, 'What have you come to do here? Mug?!'. Be it for the interest I had in Physics, which I later realized was bogus, I was astounded. I gave a diffident 'Yes' as the answer. In the 15 min monologue which ensued, was all the wisdom, that one needs to become like my dear friend Shammo. To tell the least about Shammo, he having got 'influenced' by this 'influential' senior, started believing too much in the fact that Carbon is the second most abundant element in the human body, and started to add it in copious amounts to his lungs, body building you see.

Now patient readers, I have this habit of disregarding advices when they come very strongly and mocking them wholeheartedly. I acted myself. After the long monologue he asked the question again, 'Phir, Vol banega kya?'. I beamed and said 'Nahin'. The senior was frustrated, and asked my to f**k off.

Insignificant though the incident might seem, it had a very profound impact on my life and career. That day, I took a resolve that I won't do any activity which can be possibly classified as extra-curricular in my five year stint here. Blame it apathy or the resolve, I kept it. I found nothing wrong in that before my final year while applying for companies. Still, the latest point in my 1 page resume under the head 'Extra-curricular activities' is about something I did in my class X. :D.

कुछ मेरी कलम से...

Here's a poem I wrote, :)

दिल के बहलाने को ये तराना ही सही
*वादा-ए-फर्दा ना सही, झूठा बहाना ही सही

कुछ तो दौलत चाहिए बसर करने को ज़िन्दगी
तेरी मोहब्बत ना सही, ग़म का खज़ाना ही सही

कहीं तो जाना होगा *ग़म-ए-हिज्र कैसे मिटाइए
तेरा कूचा ना सही, तो ये मयखाना ही सही

नींद ना आने के लिए क्या बहाना चाहिए
तुझसे गुफ्तगू ना सही, तेरा मुस्कुराना ही सही

देखना चाह था उसे पर वो मुड़ा न ए 'मनु'
उसका मिलना ना सही, तो सताना ही सही

- मनु चतुर्वेदी

वादा-ए-फर्दा = कल मिलने का वादा
ग़म-ए-हिज्र = जुदाई का ग़म


ये ग़ज़ल उस झूठे ख़याल को समर्पित है जो ये एतबार दिलाता है की वो इसे पढेंगे.

And she never turned...

I know that the subject is a bit trite, but nevertheless, I shall make an attempt in making you aware or remind, depending upon how many years you have spent at IIT, of what changes come along in the life of people who were kept in a babe-free (sorry to those who are so desperate that they venture to call them babes) environment for 4 years and are suddenly and continuously exposed to mind-boggling beauty. To the uninitiated, the people here can be divided in two groups, the first one consists of people who are really optimistic, don't want to give in, and who are, rather were, suave with the opposite sex, these are the ones who try for the babes outside and the others, yes this constitutes the major population here, give in totally and resort to only movies/sitcoms/p... or an interlude which accompanies Cultural/Technical Festivals to satiate their thirst for beauty or whatever.

But some recent developments have made the situation better(or worse, depends), like the introduction of MA in IITM. This has taken the female-beauty-average in the campus to unprecedented highs, the repercussions of which I wish to discuss. People(here by people I mean the straight or, almost straight boys) have started opting for HS courses over other courses so that their frequent trips to the HS department also have some academic along with ocular value, have started getting very interested in HS courses to impress their classmates, and have started to believe that enthralling beauty can not only be found in movies. Like everything has a bad side to it, so does this, it might sound incredulous, but to the seasoned like me and my dear neighbour Arvind (sorry!), who were living in the campus for 4 years and had fully evolved(?) in such conditions, who had started to look at feminine beauty like one looks at a beautiful picture or scenery, the beauty of the inanimate or the virtual, this change has posed a very intriguing problem. These people who had so much got used to it that they actually started forgetting it have got hurt the most. They, who in their four years had lost all of whatever little confidence with girls they had gained in their school years are being reminded incessantly, when they roam around in the campus, of their deplorable bandi-less state. This has led to their fall into a state of perpetual sadness for the fact that such ravishing beauty exists in reality, that they are such losers, and can do nothing but look at them and appreciate. The title is to commemorate my attempt, in vain of course, of looking at one such ravishing beauty.