2657 Productions News » Scribbles

Google Page Creator is gone….

Ananda — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:29:31 +0000

And, they didn’t do such a great job of transferring the Google Page Creator content to Google Sites. So, I’ve decided to delete the content from Google Page Creator and transfer it here instead. This site has so much random content already; four more random articles shouldn’t make too much of a difference.

Read on to find:

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Do Indians have a sense of humor?

Ananda — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:18:33 +0000

AKA “Irony over the stinky river….”

Sometimes, just when I begin to not have faith that Indians have a sense of humor, I run across something like this:

Near our house, there is an extremely foul river…. actually, it’s hard to even call it a river since it really seems to only flow when the cows go wading through the slush. Needless to say, it’s also a nice mosquito breeding ground too.

Anyway, a couple of months ago, the following two signs went up on either bank of the river:

Fragrances that make heads turn

There is something special in the air

And, just to give you a view of the river itself, in case you thought I was exaggerating….

All that I can say is that someone must have done really well in their marketing courses….

Marina Beach AKA “The sweet smelling ocean spray on Chennai’s shores….” Aah....
Wetwo Brand AKA “Population Control, Indian Style….” Most of the autos and...

Marina Beach

Ananda — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:11:30 +0000

AKA “The sweet smelling ocean spray on Chennai’s shores….”

Aah. Marina Beach. Great to go people watching. Good place to buy little silly plastic touristy stuff. Smell the fresh ocean breeze. Take a dip in the water to cool off.

Or should you?

Police Warning: Do not bath in sea danger to life

Well, it is a nice little spot to go and kill some time, especially when the sun is going down. The beach itself is extremely wide, and it’s the one public place where it seems like public displays of affection are not totally shocking! Plus, you get to see little fireworks displays when they make roast corn for you….

Do Indians have a sense of humor? AKA “Irony over the stinky river….” Sometimes, just when I...
Wetwo Brand AKA “Population Control, Indian Style….” Most of the autos and...

Wetwo Brand

Ananda — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:05:16 +0000

AKA “Population Control, Indian Style….”

Most of the autos and a lot of the yellow-painted vehicles in Chennai have this saying on the back “We two ours one” or sometimes simply “Ours one.” Along with the P. James tagging covering everything in Chennai, this was another prevelant sight that Amy and I were not certain what it meant.

We ended up asking one of our local friends about it, and it turns out that this is India’s attempt at population control. The slogan used to be “We two ours two” meaning two children per family, but that has since been reduced to the one child per family recommendation….

The above photo was in an auto that Amy and I took to work one day. We liked both the propaganda for controlling family size and the call for no child labor. Explosive fun!

Do Indians have a sense of humor? AKA “Irony over the stinky river….” Sometimes, just when I...
Marina Beach AKA “The sweet smelling ocean spray on Chennai’s shores….” Aah....

Submission

Ananda — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:01:44 +0000

AKA “Quick, shhh! The Big-boss has just entered….”

I was on the Tata-Dhan Academy vehicle the other day (or, as they like to call it, the “vee-kul”) and one of the passengers was the head of our organization. There was a notable hush over everyone in the van as we sat there waiting for the last members to shut down their computers and pack up to leave. Yet this is a time that most of the passengers chit-chat, play music on their mobile phones, finger drum on the seats, and generally enjoy themselves at the day’s end. But in front of me, two of my colleagues are whispering so quietly that I would guess their actual means of communication was by reading each other’s lips.

Today, I asked one of them about it.

“What can I say Ananda?” was the response. “I guess I would say we do it out of respect.”

“How is that?” I ask. No, really, I don’t understand—I’m not just trying to make my colleague’s life difficult. It’s just that everything here gets explained either as being out of respect or because it’s their culture. Like why they all have such a hard time calling me Ananda and would be happier if I just let them call me “Sir.”

The explanation that I eventually get is what can be summarized as essentially, in such a situation as traveling with a superior, you don’t speak unless you are spoken to, and even then, only as much as is necessary.

But I still can’t quite figure that out. That seems so servile and submissive. I mean, I can understand being more reserved, more formal, more “calculated” in the presence of such a superior…. I can understand turning off the mobile phone radio, or using headphones instead of the speakerphone…. I can understand not yelling silly things to someone sitting at the front of the van and acting generally disruptive. But to act as if you don’t have the right to carry on a casual conversation with one of your colleagues seems like it’s going a little overboard.

I have a few other questions. Wouldn’t the leader of the organization, if he truly felt that he was beyond simple conversations with the other people in the organization, simply take another vehicle for himself if he really didn’t want these sorts of interactions? I also like to think that the simple fact of him using the same mode of transportation as the rest of us is not only because it is practical to do so, but also that he can get to learn something more about us beyond the work we do. For example, if it weren’t for him traveling on our van with us and overhearing my conversation about the Academy puppies, how is he to know that I really love animals? By him being there with us, he got to learn of another way to relate to me—a way that is different from our standard discussions on improving the English writing skills of the students at the Academy.

Who knows, maybe that’s the idealist (or the foreigner) in me speaking.

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The (unbutchered) retreat report I just came back from my first DHAN Foundation retreat...

A precursor? Probably. A promise? Perhaps.

Ananda — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:58:25 +0000

I was making a feeble attempt at cleaning out some of the clutter in my living room, and I quickly got distracted when I remembered that I had brought back a copy of the booklet that had accompanied the DWAB “One Final Episode in Our Attempts at Persistence” record. What should I do? Continue cleaning? Or scan the booklet and post it online?

It was a tough decision, but I ended up deciding to go with the booklet option, so here it is…. Lots of mellow drama….

Perhaps this is a precursor for some other things (like a big book with all my old stories, poems, and drawings combined) but I’m not in a position to make any promises at the moment. I guess it all depends on how much procrastinating about straightening-up of the house I need to do.

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Mr Grumpy’s 2009 “How-to-write” calendar

Ananda Mahto — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 17:15:07 +0000

Over the past few weeks, everyone has been going calendar crazy. I mean EVERYONE. I was sitting in meetings with colleagues trying to write “messages” and then find the right pictures to go with the calendar they were making. Amy was asking me how to edit some of her photos so that they would look better when they were printed in the Centre for Microfinance’s calendar. Friends were running out to buy newspapers which had free calendars included with them.

There was so much hype that I just couldn’t resist making a calendar of my own.

Open publication

For those of you who don’t know what the Grumpy Writer’s Grumps is all about, it’s a place where I’m taking some of the Indian English problems that I am always correcting and making a (hopefully weekly) one-page newsletter telling people (mostly my students at the Tata-Dhan Academy) what kinds of things they should avoid when writing. Not everything will translate to an international audience—many things are definitely localized, in some cases even to Tamil Nadu (and not India overall) but for those of you who have been to India, you might recognize some of the things I write about from time to time.

Anyway, if you want to print this little thing, you can download a different PDF which—when printed double-sided, cut in quarters, correctly arranged, and stapled—will give you a nice pocket-sized version of the calendar above.

An interview with Ananda Mahto Every year, pretty much everyone available from DHAN Foundation and...
The ODF Campaign Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about poop in...
Submission AKA “Quick, shhh! The Big-boss has just entered….” I was...

I passed 100 posts and didn’t even realize….

Ananda Mahto — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 05:11:17 +0000

Well, honestly, that’s somewhat irrelevant, especially since I tend to have stuff posted in so many places.

And that wasn’t the point of my writing today. No—the point of my post today was to share a nice hefty PDF file of “The Art of 2657 Productions” which you can also buy (in a different version—the printed version doesn’t include all the text) from Blurb. I know. Now I won’t get any sales on my book. But that’s OK. Y’all know that I like to give stuff away all the time…. Consider this my one-hundred-one-post gift.

Open publication

Anyway, you can get the book from Issuu—so check it out….

Buy a book… make me happy I guess I should really say “Buy THIS book… make...
A flashback to 15 years ago…. I’m getting old. I must be. I was just sorting...
Mr Grumpy’s 2009 “How-to-write” calendar Over the past few weeks, everyone has been going calendar...

“Self portraits” aka “The end of an era”

Ananda Mahto — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:39:31 +0000

It’s the end of an era, I guess. My trademark is no more. I’m serious. It’s gone. My built-in cat-toy… my man-leash…—whatever you want to call that strange braided patch of long hair that I have had for what? Fifteen years?—met its fate with a pair of scissors on Sunday, March 23, 2008.

Seeing that I had shaved my beard some two weeks before that, I guess it is going to be a lot more difficult to do self portraits now (see Exhibit A).

Oh well.

DAMN It! I was just having some fun at work a couple...

Six new old stories….

Ananda Mahto — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:10:29 +0000

I was ego-surfing the internet archives the other day, and I realized that some of the posts that I had made before my old server went down had actually been archived there and not simply lost to the digital graveyard. I’ve decided to pre-date them to match the dates they were originally posted, so you can either jump to the end of the archives and poke around or you can cheat and pick from the list below:

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