On taking exams

I took my Grade 2 guitar exam today. The average age of the other examinees is about 14. Its easy to forget how stressful even a simple exam like this can be - pieces that I have practised a hundred times still come out wrong when there is an examiner poised to score me.

The last exam I took was my UK driving test, that was ten years ago, and I won't tell you when I took a test before that, because most of the readers of this blog were probably just starting school about then!

Anyway, its over and I should at least pass, so on to the next grade.
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Travels in the North East

I made a long delayed visit to the North East this week. As you may know, it is a significant contributor to our Schools business, and Rajiv Singh and his team are doing a great job of establishing Pearson as the premier school publisher in the region. I would urge many of you in support departments to visit the team, and get a better understanding of the rather unique challenges they face - from IT, to Customer Service, to HR.




Naveen and I visited Guwahati, Dimapur, Kohima and Tura on this visit. In fact I am writing this on the drive from Tura to Guwahati, while in the middle of the breathtakingly beautiful Garo Hills.



Rajiv claimed that you can open the school bag of any primary school kid in the state and you will find a Pearson book. This is logical, since we publish on behalf of the state board, but its illustrative of the difference in the scale of what we are doing here, and in many other parts of the country. Here, something like 600,000 students are learning English from a Pearson book.



Cynic that I am, I asked Rajiv to stop at a small government school we passed - three classrooms, one teacher. Now we have photographic evidence of the truth of his statement.

 
 
Vivek Govil

The Joy of Giving

What do you do when you have over a lakh books in the warehouse and space is at a premium? You can pulp them; and at the pitiful, peanut-like sum of 8 rupees a kilo, you might stand to make a few thousand rupees. Or you can give them away, for nothing, and the smiles of a few young readers might not do much for your bank balance, but it does give you an awfully good feeling. If you like feeling warm and mushy inside, of course.



In June 2008, Pearson Education, India, sent a few truckloads of books to Varanasi. It was the culminating step of many meetings and discussions and a lot of hard work on the part of some people. And it was the first step towards literacy for hundreds of kids who had rarely had the chance to touch, let alone own, new and unused books.



Some of these books were distributed among schools funded by a programme called World Literacy of Cananda [WLC]. Some of the books went to a mobile library, a rural library and a community library supported by Rotary Club International. One lakh sixty thousand books were distributed among forty schools. And of all the pictures that I saw from that episode, I really liked this one below. The sight of three kids on a bench, sitting and reading very earnestly tells you nothing, until you put it in context. And the context here is a centre dedicated to kids suffering from mental or physical disabilities.

It’s just a drop in the ocean. Giving out a few lakh books, in a country where millions of kids don’t get a fair chance at education, is just one step on the long road to total literacy.



This year, Pearson Education is reaching out to kids with a donation of over 3 lakh books to the Bakul Library Foundation. The Bakul Foundation has big plans, which include setting up community libraries for slum kids and organising mobile libraries to reach out to rural areas. At the same time, they have some valid concerns. The biggest challenge, according to Sujit Mahapatro from Bakul, will be to ensure that these books actually benefit the children who receive them. To this end, they are planning to mobilise volunteers to engage the children’s interest in reading books in English. And the first step of this initiative was taken on 30 September in Bhubaneswar when internationally-acclaimed actor and director, Nandita Das announced the book giving as part of the celebrations of the Joy of Giving Week in India.



Now, in our country, we have three ruling passions. There’s the Great Indian Reality Show, otherwise known as elections; the Great Indian Sport, namely cricket; and the Greatest Indian obsession—movies. So, if there’s an actress in the room, all attention is likely to be focused on her. Or so one would suppose. But take a look at this photo…

On the right, there’s Ms Das. And beside her, a kid engrossed in a book, oblivious to the star and the clicking cameras. Now that’s something you don’t see everyday! But the event in question wasn’t a run-of-the-mill show either. As the children (and the adults present) listened enthralled, Ms Das enacted a Gujarati folk tale. After giving away some of the books donated by Pearson to the students from the Madhurmayee School for Children of Convicts, she also spoke to the media on the importance of giving as a part of our social responsibility.

Social responsibility…corporate responsibility…these are big words. At the end of the day, the smile on a kid’s face says it all.

Post script 1: In case you were wondering who the nameless faces behind the donation were, here’s the list of acknowledgements. The donation was made possible by Vivek Govil and Dipankar Bose (the latter ensured that the entire process went off without a hitch). Naveen Rajlani, Prashant Rathore and the Orissa school sales team stepped in on the day of the event to take care of some last-minute emergencies.

Post script 2: And here’s what the print media had to say about the event:

The Indian Express

The Hindu

The Times of India

 

Nagging Nostalgia

It's probably my umpteenth attempt at writing something since a very long time. I had heard a friend say once that skills of an editor and those of an author are supposedly inversely proportional; or rather "an editor is a failed author". (Later he had added as an afterthought, "But well, we all know that it's not true!") Amidst a crowd of thoughts that I keep collecting and filtering every day, this was something that stayed on with me. Every time I would be confronted by a blank screen, or a blank sheet of paper, being true to the editor that I am, I would almost begin to panic. What am I going to write? What is it that I really want to write? And primarily, why would I write? The moment I would reach the "why" of anything, all reasons would just drown under the weight of the "why". I remember I used to play this game with a friend of mine, back in school. Every time we would sense the pre-exam panic attack, we would keep repeating the "why"s till the answers trickled down to nonsensical nothingness, diluting all sense of nervousness. But on the flip side, as we grew up, this made us realize how utterly meaningless everything is at the end of the day.and we swore by the Keynesian philosophy: "In the long run, we are all dead". And therefore, I justify my extreme unease about putting anything down in words.



However, we got to see the short run as well. In the constant tussle between the thoughts collected and the "why"s, sometimes the latter gives in. Now feels like such a moment. It's 1 October 2009! I begin one more phase of my working life: when I officially begin working from home. As I look back, I see that all my beginnings have been on the first day of a particular month (I began working as an intern on 1 July 2007, I began working as a full-time employee on 1 January 2008). That makes someone like me very happy, in a juvenile sort of way. I like having even numbers when it comes to numbered lists (so I accordingly manipulate points in a list, if I make one), I like round figures while paying bills, or fares (and that often means paying more than the actual fare, since anyone else would not accept less than the actual amount just to respect my eccentricity)! If I have to follow clock time, and begin work, I don't like to begin at 9.42s or 9.58s. It should either be 9.30s or 9.40s or 9.45s or 10.00s, and so on. So I have these minutes of wait.



Anyway, to come back to what I intended to write at the very beginning: I hardly ever realized I enjoyed working for Pearson Education so much till I actually left it all behind. Back at home, here in Kolkata. Every thing seems peaceful and nice, and even luxurious to a certain extent, when I compare these days with the ones I spent alone at my rented room in Patparganj (with my screaming landlord and landlady as my neighbours) after work. I don't know if it is a clear case of the grass being greener on the other side, and I had never thought I would ever be saying this, but now I truly miss everything that came with working for Pearson Education in Delhi and, later, Noida. And just like everything remote assumes a hue of nostalgia, even the puddle-strewn, cratered lanes of Madhuvihar, and the lonely rickshaw rides through the dark lanes of I.P. Extension seem so pretty now. I definitely miss the office, and the view from the seventh-floor huge glass windows that overlook the fields, the cricket players, the grazing buffalos, the roads beyond the fields, and the sunsets across the distant skyline defined by gradually emerging sky scrapers. Just the other day, I was telling a friend how taking breaks while working at home would no more mean coffee breaks at Bunker. Needless to mention the rather (in)famous TT breaks! And of course, of all the things I miss, I miss my friends and colleagues the most. How often now, without even realizing, I keep browsing through all the photographs of the two NSMs I have been able to attend! By now, everyone at home has been well familiarized with the people and their names. Even my three-year-old nephew has learnt to pronounce "Yajnaseni" (the way it is supposed to be pronounced) almost flawlessly! And it surprises me not without reason, since he still mispronounces my name as "Kusanya"!

blog post

Their Story, Not Our Glory

 

They say, ‘Cricket is a great leveller. It creates deities out of mortals and demons out of gods’. (I hope) Most of you may nod in agreement that our cricket commentators define the glories of this great sport in such majestic terms, invariably, when they have nothing else to observe or state.

Much to your relief/disappointment this post is not about cricket or anything remotely connected to it because I have been warned that it’s not a matter to be trifled with. However, without questioning the validity of this claim, I would like to state that cricket is certainly not the sole ‘leveller’ in this world. Among a number of other things, the one ‘leveller’ that I firmly believe in is the writing space. It does, indeed, stimulate self-expression in various degrees and forms, without taking hierarchies into account.

Hence, I regard the Pearson blog in high esteem and revere the scope it offers for debate, discussion, imagination, petulance and aggression. At the same time, I am surprised by the remarkable conservatism we display while dealing with this space. We tepidly tread the proverbial ‘middle path’ when faced with issues, which are deliciously contentious (well, you can think of at least three, without squinting...). In case you are suspecting that this piece of writing may turn out to be a treatise on the ‘act’ of writing and its functionalities, let me put your fears to rest. I would not dare to attempt or embark on such a grand exercise.

Rather, I would merely utilise this space and the medium to present certain facts and views regarding a matter which largely defines the ethical order of the publishing world and deserves more than a casual reference. The matter that I am referring to is ‘intellectual proprietorship’ and its purview, as well as our own perspective on it.

The basic standards of protection of literary and artistic works were put forth by the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in 1886 in Switzerland. Initiated by the French author Victor Hugo, the convention firmly established the author/creator of an intellectual work as the sole owner of its copyright, without being ‘asserted or declared’. Most importantly, the creator’s proprietorship is not just restricted to the original work, but also extends to all derivative works, unless he/she willingly disclaims it. The Berne Convention also explicitly states that foreign authors/creators will be conferred with the same rights and privileges regarding copyrighted material as domestic authors in any country that has signed the convention.

Under the Berne Convention, all works (except photographic and cinematographic works) are protected by copyright for at least fifty years after the author’s death.

As the Berne Convention defined certain uniform standards for the acknowledgement and recognition of the ownership of intellectual works, a clear and definite notion of ‘copyright’ emerged. As we understand it now, it is the ‘legal, exclusive right of the author of a creative work to control the copying of that work’.

Therefore, while dealing with intellectual property, it is important for us to be aware of certain nuances of copyright.

Following the Berne Convention, all works are copyrighted as soon as they are written, and no formal notice or declaration is required.

We should be very careful while dealing with material posted on the Internet. Internet postings are not in the public domain (unless explicitly stated) and hence, copying or adaptation or replication at one’s own discretion is not permitted.

 

While using someone else’s work, one should be conscious of the principle of ‘fair use’. ‘Fair use’ in itself is a complex, to some extent vague and controversial idea. To make matters simple, every time we get into the act of reproducing someone else’s work or a portion of his/her work, we need to be honest about the purpose of the act. ‘Will it accomplish commercial gain and profit or will it benefit the society and help to spread awareness about a social issue without fetching me any financial gains?’  Your answer will establish your motive.

 

Even adapting a concept or an idea from someone else’s work and appropriating it in one’s own words is an act of violation of copyright.

 

India is a signatory of the Berne Convention and also an active member of the World Intellectual Property Organisation in Geneva. The Indian copyright law of 1957 recognises the creator of an intellectual work as the sole owner of copyright and prohibits the reproduction of a previously written/created artistic material or performance rights without prior consent of the owner. The law not only guards against intellectual ‘theft’ but also protects dramatic, artistic and musical works along with cinematography and sound recording. The Indian copyright law clearly identifies violation of copyright as a criminal act.

 

Dear reader,

By now you must be writhing in your seat or gasping for breath and cursing the moment when you started reading this rambling post, may be, in a light vein. My apologies!

I admit, that this piece of writing does not qualify as humorous or entertaining, neither does it generate controversy or debate.

It merely touches upon a few facts regarding a matter, which affects us in many ways every day, and often leaves us very confused. With greater access to information, we find a vast repertoire of artistic works waiting to be explored. In our zeal to procure and utilise all that we can get our hands on, we are sometimes careless, at times irresponsible. Especially, with the Internet offering easy transaction of intellectual property, we tend to assume that they have been created to facilitate our needs. It’s indeed very tempting to take the easy way out and feign ignorance while using someone else’s work to suit our requirements. This is tantamount to theft and the sooner we realise the criminal nature of the act, the better for us and our trade.

So it is of utmost importance that we exercise fair play, sensitivity as well as conscientiousness by educating ourselves about the scope of intellectual copyright and examining the source of any material that reaches us before publishing it. It may be a little tedious, even frustrating but surely, it’s worth the effort.

As I conclude, I feel the need to defend this disorderly piece of writing, which apparently flits from one idea to another. My initial reference to cricket is not completely misplaced in the context of the subject that I have pursued so far. So let me flash my ‘writer’s license’ to draw an insipid analogy between the two. Yes, you must have guessed it…and no matter how tame it sounds, you can’t deny that it is true. If cricket is revered as the ‘gentleman’s game’, our trade too is founded upon the same principles of fairness and integrity. And we are the incorruptible white knights in charge of protecting its honour!

 

Soumitri

 

 

The Joys of Reply All

Observation número uno: In a hierarchy-driven organisation, not only will people hit Reply All, they will copy their immediate supervisor into a test mail.

 

Observation number two (I ran out of Spanish at this point): In a paranoid world, where data-security and data-privacy are fairly alien concepts, people will hit Reply All, copy their immediate supervisors and cc their personal mail id.

 

Fascinating doesn’t quite cover it.

 

 

 

Delirium

 

Reply vs Reply All

It’s fascinating how many people don’t realise there are two buttons right next to each other in Microsoft Outlook. One says “Reply” and the other “Reply all” – maybe you should think about which one is appropriate for you. Do we all need to know that you received a mail from Yatendra? The first few were amusing, but having to delete a hundred mails makes it less funny.

 

Independent of this instance, I don’t know if you have noticed how emails can keep getting more and more cc’s added on – the number of people copied never seems to shorten, it just gets longer. So even when you do a “Reply all”, please review the people you are sending it to. Usually you can trim the list a bit – and we certainly don’t need to be copied on the “Thank You” and “Your Welcome” phase of your email exchanges.

 

There, that’s my rant for the day.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Every once in a while, I visit this blog and wonder: Is the Argumentative Indian a myth?

Or perhaps we are all too politically correct to respond when a motion is thrown open in the house. The great Indian political debate largely appears to veer between two extremes. There is either peace and quiet and the gentle snores of those who fell asleep while listening to the other speaker; or there are items of footwear being hurled all over the place.

I’m not about to hurl a shoe, figuratively speaking, of course, but while the world and its colleague are happier elsewhere playing with a ping-pong ball, I may as well take the floor and deliver a harangue for both sides of the motion. And the motion is

*drumroll*

This house believes that it is time to move forward with the times, especially when it comes to office timings.

*ahem*

To be perfectly honest, I can’t think of too many arguments for the motion. This could be because I’m not really a morning person. (I mean some are born owls, some achieve owlishness…and you know how that one ends.) But there certainly is one argument which appeals to many people, if I go by overheard conversations.

In this harried age of Covey’s quadrants and time-management mantras, an hour saved can translate into so much—a visit to the gym, driving lessons, salsa lessons, doing someone’s homework, watching a play, drinking two pegs more than usual, or just sitting and listening to the sounds of silence. And all of these (except perhaps the two pegs which might cause cirrhosis of the liver and what not) will undoubtedly improve the quality of your life. And not getting stuck in traffic snarls on a daily basis would probably sweeten tempers all around.

But, any motion that is proposed will inevitably have someone to oppose it. And these are some of the practical considerations that have been overheard. (Given my great respect for freedom of speech and the need to remain anonymous, I’ll just describe the people rather than name them.)

Concerned mother: Well, this timing sounds lovely, but I would have to change my child’s school.

Harrassed car-owner who can’t drive: I can be ready to leave by seven-thirty, but my driver refuses to come before 9.10.

Domestic worrier: My cook simply will not come early in the morning. And you know how difficult it is to get decent help these days.

And last but not least:

Aggrieved colleague: Abbe hum soyenge kab and jagenge kab?

Different people, different concerns. Oh, I have no doubt that if there was a decree, people would buckle down and adjust and figure out how to get to the office by 8.30. That’s the best part about practical problems; there’s bound to be some kind of solution. But I have a concern that’s a little impractical, a little idealistic and therefore perhaps, a little difficult to resolve.

It’s like this—to earn my salary righteously, I have to work for eight and a half hours a day (minus thirty minutes for lunch and another twenty minutes for assorted coffee breaks), five days a week. That’s what it says on paper. But sometimes, it just isn’t enough to earn a salary. Sometimes, it takes more than twelve hours a day, seven days a week to do a job to satisfaction. And having spent more than two years in this company, I know for a fact that there are a good many people working here, who believe that it ain’t worth doing, if it ain’t worth doing well.

And there will always be times, when the job at hand is one whose deadline went by yesterday (or, on one memorable occasion, the previous month). At times like that, don’t you agree that it would be a pretty bad idea to have an egg-timer in one’s brain going ping at five?

At the end of the day, I guess one of the reasons I’ve loved working in this place is because it’s mostly been quite different from the universally caricatured jailhouse-like offices. And because I’ve never felt like I was stuck in the monotony of a nine-to-five job.

Delirium, once Delight

Is it time to change the office timings?

Clearly Noida traffic is a disaster. I remain optimistic about how much better things will be in a year's time when the Metro is fully operational and the NH24 is widened. But until then, what do you think about changing the office timings to start at 830 and end at 5 ?

For me that would certainly be better, roughly halving what is a long commute, and the thought of reaching home in daylight is extremely tempting. I met my counterpart at McGraw Hill today, and they have been following this timing successfully for a while. I believe we used to once follow this timing, so some of you who have been around a while will know how it feels.

On the other hand, I recognise that some of you may have commitments in the mornings, kids to get off to school etc.

I would really welcome some debate. Does anyone have strong feelings for or against?

The floor is open.

Vivek Govil




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School NSM 2009 : First hand account

As I write this I am sure many editors are busy sharpening their blogposts with mindblowing vocab and pin point precise grammar . ….Here goes my first hand account of this school NSM….

Right from the day we had started looking for the venue Rohit always had this suspicious look on me that being a Rathore from Jodhpur I will escort him to the desert of Rajasthan so had happened whenever he tried to push for Srinagar,Leh,Laddakh or Jammu as a destination , I had something or other from Raj which scored above, Finally we kind of settled down to choose Udaipur because it has got everything from lakes ,royal Palaces, greenery and hills and I am sure this consensus satisfied both of us .

Although a shorter journey compared with Goa we were ready with our stuff of playing cards , CDs and IPODs and as usual Nikhil did wonderful arrangement for on the House facilities. We took over three bogies of train and were singing and dancing throughout as if we were birds just set free from cages.

We landed in Udaipur well in time and were greeted at Trident with traditional Aarti , Tika welcome . Everybody was overwhelmed by the scenic beauty and royal ambience in and around Trident.

Well people told me that Conference schedule was bit hectic as this year we had this combined presentations by sales and editorial for frontlist titles…..thanks to award winning idea of Diyasree as compared to the previous year the presentations were more interactive this time round.

On the final day of presentations I had this herculean task to hold back 140 people for corporate quiz , you have to believe me if you see the pictures time and again I had to pose as crucified Jesus to hold back audience and participants , who were shouting I know!!...I know!! at the top of their voices.....

All the product presentations went on really well ,,,tough time for the judges to choose best presentation.

Then their was Business Ideas session where in a short span of time teams were really able to sell their !deas to the judges ,,,,I hope Sanjeev is putting some money on the prize winning idea.

Days were engaging ……evenings were equally entertaining …..with party games ,,,this was first time I had won an award for guzzling beer ….otherwise its generally fat restaurant bills or some tough words from my wife.

The cultural evening during the Galla dinner was really touching as the folk dances really struck the chords with people and they just cant help but get on the dance floor and perform with the folk artist .

Finally the DJ party and I could see almost everybody on the dance floor but the people who stole the hearts of crowd were Abhishek and Shilpi ,,,,they almost recreated the famous song of ‘Hum’ the Jumma C**** number on the dance floor .Perfect ending to three eventful days.

Finally… as I had promised, Rohit , I hope I have delivered …..

few strange things which I would like to mention ….Thank heavens that their were no ghost sightings this time but here was one “other Rohit” which used to get activated only in the evenings after 8 pm and will just refuse to go back to sleep till he is forced to do so …and “the other Rohit” was doing things which “Rohit” we know from 10.00 am to 06.00 pm can never do…and then there was this “other Naveen” who can bring life to any party once he gets hold of mike, he can organize games, beat the full time DJ with the mixing of songs, get everybody including the most non interested parties to the dance floor ,,,,Please let me know if any of you had these sightings of “the others” other than what I have noticed.

Well that’s all from me for this NSM……

Prashant Rathore

Coming soon……… many more blog posts by ……….Saumitri….Gitesh…Diya …. …..Jaydeep