What's Poetry and What's Prose?

As old poetry is well defined, I don't think we can debate it anymore. I liked this question and here are my dozen law abiding attempts to answer the question.

1. "Cause and effect" law: If you need a laxative, it's prose. If you need a purgative, it's poetry. (I said that only to catch your attention. I may need to practice catching stones too shortly lest I be stoned to death! Please read on… that's the only objective) :-)
   
2. "Inky Pinky Ponky" law: It's the compositor's choice because he/she has the power to place it into the prose or poetry section in the magazine. (Of course, the composer might be fired later. Who knows? May be nobody will catch the error too)
   
3. "Holier than thou" law: If prose sounds better, that's poetry. If poetry doesn't sound all that good, it's prose. (Didn't get it? Neither did I! But what stops me from saying it? I
   put this here to fill the gap just like that)
   
4. "Sweat is the key" law: The degree of poeticism (if there is such a word) in a sentence is directly proportional to the product of the effort that goes into writing it and the effort that goes into understanding it. Mathematically, the degree of poeticism in a sentence = k (effort of writing) x (effort of understanding) where k is a constant. Therefore, a sentence can look like perfect prose to some while it can look like perfect poetry to others depending on the variables. (Oops. Did I waste some sweat on this para of prose?)
   
5. Universal law of poetry: Modern poetry makes poets/poetesses of us all. (I am a poet too, but hey, who can't be now?)
   
6. "Fill in the blank" law: Give it a name and enough people will believe it is! (True, eh?)
   
7. Equality law: All prose is an equal and opposite poem. (This one's for Newton who poked his nose before me in everything else I love)
   
8. Author Tools law: A poet needs a pen, a paper and somebody to listen to the words. An author of prose doesn't need the pen and the paper. (Now, now, now. The stones are on the catapults and are they aimed at me?)
   
9. Publisher's law: Poetry is wonderful, great, and divine until you send it to publishers. (Send your poetic masterpieces to a few publishers before you send me to the gallows, okay?)
   
10. Author–Reader Proportionality law: The number of authors willing to write are directly proportional to those not willing to read them. (Alas, Murphy forgot to say this, I think….)
    
11. Editor's dilemma: If this is prose, show me your poetry. If this is poetry, show me your prose. (This is the author's last chance to avoid a future distortion of history)
    
12. Comprehension law: If not many understand it, but all pretend to do, it's poetry. If all understand it and not many pretend to do, it's prose. (Whew, if you got to here, please spare me. I only was hoping you will enjoy my prose, or is it poetry???)
    

Satyanarayana (now, how do I apply for copyright?) Pamarty

The future of Books

Recently, a recent discussion on a net forum got me thinking wild. I repeat what I said there.

As I write this, I hold a tattered plastic book. Many children's books are being printed on plastic these days. Those who believe in the permanance of plastic books should see the status of the copy I have after it underwent material science tests conducted by my two sons.

With regard to the future of books, here is what I see with my pineal gland. In the near future, we must expect a digitized book stored on a holographic disc no larger than your eye lens. In fact, the transparent nature of the holographic eye lens would allow you to wear it right on your eye. A holographic reader will be embedded onto the plackets of eye glasses and your spectacle lenses will double up as a computer screen.

This technology is sure to arrive if it hasn't already. All you do is put the lens on your eye and start viewing it with voice commands. You can choose from a library which will consist of such holographic lenses stored in a cylindrical storage device similar to a fountain pen of yesteryears. If you think it's cumbersome, all you need to do will be to connect to the internet with voice commands again and see what you want to see and talk to whom you want to talk. It's the closest it will get to a brain transplant with existing technology.

Once you wear this stuff, it will be sufficient if you knew just one language. Voice recognition technologies would have advanced so much that words in all the world's languages would be stored in a similar device and all you need to plug in will be an earphone in the ear to hear a translation in a language of your choice. Danish will no longer be gibberish to people from Gannavaram.

With the spectacles, if you view a board in Chinese, you can view it in a language of your choice in your "spectovision". All this technology would be available for 200 USD in 2 decades from
now if not earlier. Any takers?

Satya [dreaming as always]

Satya's Murphy Laws for Blogs and E Forums

1. Your eagerness to see your post quickly is directly proportional to the time it will take to appear on an E Forum.
   
2. The best way to detect your Blog addiction is to look for the symptoms in your family members.
   
3. If there is a possibility that you can say something wrong, you will eventually say it.
   
4. Making a simple post is not so simple.
   
5. If everything seems to be written well, to increase pleasure, you should start reading between the lines.
   
6. A totally logical thread mostly ends with the wrong conclusion.
   
7. Forum thermodynamics: The more dynamic a poster, the more the thermal generation.
   
8. Law of understanding: A post that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood. Corollary: All messages can be misunderstood.
   
9. The number of stones thrown at you is directly proportional to the time you spent on the post.
   
10. Any resistance to your ideas expressed in your posts is inversely proportional to the ammo left in your head to defend them.
    
11. There are two types of Bloggers: Those who post and those who don't.
    
12. The simplest of questions asked of a blogger remain unanswered while the ones without easy answers are always answered.
    
13. You can learn a little by reading, and a lot by posting.
    
14. If your present post feels better, its often because of your previous post.
    
15. If you make your post when the thread has become mature or when the posters have tired or both, you will often get away with the last word.
    
16. There are always two valid sides to an argument until a member makes a post supporting one side.
    
17. The life of a thread is directly proportional to the intensity of protests from other members to the statement in question.
    
18. The more passionately a post is made, the more the passion needed to defend it.
    
19. When you make your post on one thread, people are always making their posts on the other.
    
20. The number of posts in any thread rises in direct proportion to the posters' reliance on quotable sources.
    
21. Important posts that ought to be made are not made particularly when members expect them to be made.
    
22. Never argue with a poster who has the time to make three posts a day (er, night).
    
23. All the good questions have already been asked. What's more, they have already been answered too.
    
24. No ignorable post goes ignored.
    
25. Satya's dilemma: The more serious I wish to sound, the loonier I do.

What's wrong with us?

Sometime ago, there was a discussion on the spate of suicides by farmers in India. Someone suggested that to solve the problem, the pesticide manufacturers should focus on the matter and that son-in-laws who harass for dowries are also a problem. Could be...

I am really not qualified to speak on this. The reasons are:

1. I come from a village in the City
2. I never attempted or committed suicide, and
3. I never interviewed anyone who committed suicide successfully.

Homicide is another matter, however. All the same, qualifications don't matter to air views, do they?

Besides, I always don't say nothing when I have nothing to say. So, here I go…

There was talk that since a majority of the people in India consume pesticides while committing suicide, if the pesticide industry and other poison manufacturers focused on the problem, it could be solved.

Sure it can be. If they do focus, this is what might happen I think...

A committee with members from the governing and non-governing parties will be formed to determine which chemicals fall under the umbrella of pesticides and which fall under medicines. After a protracted delay and exchange of money laden suitcases, they will come up with a
list.

Sorting the list out will be very difficult because most medicines these days contain pesticides and the APMSM (The Association of Pesticide Manufacturers, Sellers and Marketers) will claim sole proprietary rights over pesticides and will have a long drawn legal battle with AMDPI (The Association of Medicinal Drug Producing Industries).

To add to this tangle, the CBPAI (Cool Beverage Producers Alliance of India) will say that their beverages too contain pesticides and that no one can dispute their birthright to add pesticides to the cool drinks and bottled water. They will contend that in these difficult times, they are helping the society by building its immunity to pesticides.

They claim that after prolonged use of their beverages, the entire society becomes resistant to pesticides and thus the desired result will be achieved without education, counseling or any other method.

They stop short of saying that they sometimes add pests too to speed up the immunization process. The VPU (Vegetable and Fruit Producers Union) will also join hands with CBPAI with the same logic. The SCUI (Student's Coalition of Unionised India) and the VVAS (viSva
vidyArthi aBhivRddhi samiti) will call it a violation of the constitution to term pesticides as chemicals or medicines. They will come out into the streets in protests expressing their opinion that pesticides are their sole source for country made indigenous explosive devices (CMIEDs) and that they should not be brought under control. They also will go on to demonstrate the efficacy of their inventions on the streets.

After a protracted fight between all concerned and an enormous delay, the tangle might get cleared, and a final list will be prepared. It will then be decided that the following procedures should be followed to ensure that pesticides don't fall into wrong hands.

• Before selling pesticides, the pesticide suppliers should first ascertain that the buyer is a farmer.
• This can be easily confirmed if the buyer is in possession of a farmer Identity card (FIC). The farmer card will have the photograph of the farmer and no one else. If the card has the photograph of someone else, then it means the holder of the card is not a farmer.
  It could also mean that the card is of someone else and not the person holding it. No amount of pleading by the alleged farmer that the error was committed by the officials who issued the card will help.
• If the farmer holds a card that has been erroneously issued to him with someone else's photograph, it is his bounden duty to disguise himself as the person in the photograph and imitate his smile or a lack of it as the case may be. The seller of pesticides should
  display in a prominent place a chart containing the names and addresses of plastic surgeons in the vicinity for this purpose.
  Failure to display such a chart will result in the cancellation and forfeiture of the supplier's LTSP (License to sell pesticides).
• Under no circumstances will a duplicate or corrected card be issued to the person failing to hold a card with his own photograph.
• It is the mistake of the farmer to have looked like someone else when the photograph was taken in the first place. Hence, the onus is on him to look like the person in the photograph once again.
• If the card contains somebody else's name, the farmer should promptly notify the same to FICIA (Farmer Identity Card Issuing Authority) and issue an advertisement in all leading newspapers informing of his change in name.
• Once the identity of the buyer as a farmer is ensured, the supplier should also ensure that the farmer has already seen a psychiatrist and obtained a NPSC (not prone to suicide certificate).
• Psychiatrists who are qualified from government colleges will be certified by the government if they apply for the same using form 7 of the applications brochure. The other six forms will be strictly for official use, but can be retained by the psychiatrist for future reference. Those qualified from non-government colleges will be exempt from such stipulation and can therefore start issuing NPSCs directly.
• Any supplier found selling pesticides to farmers without FIC or NPSC will be liable to have their LTSPs (License to sell pesticides) cancelled for life and beyond.
• Even while selling pesticides to farmers in possession of FIC and NPSC, all suppliers should conduct a test of the farmers on a lie-detector machine (Polygraph) to ensure that they intend to use the pesticides for the intended purposes only and that they will not use
  it in the future for any purposes other than those stipulated in the FSPA (Farmer suicide prevention act, 2004).
• The results of the polygraph test along with the FIC and NPSC in original with un-forgeable holograms and bar codes should be forwarded to the FSPC (Farmer Suicide Prevention Cell) for proper scrutiny and approval.
• Officers from the FSPC will conduct visits and surprise background checks on the farmer who intends to buy pesticides. They will check all the antecedents like bank balance, debt history, number of daughters to be married, number of sons to be educated, dowry demands of son-in-laws and would-be son-in-laws, health, love-life, relations with money-lenders, ground water level, availability of free power, weather situation in the region, monsoon related studies, marriage life, etc. to ascertain their PPW (pesticide possession worthiness).
• And this well thought out and efficient process goes on and on plugging all loopholes…
  …while the farmer and his family decide to drink water from some of our rivers instead, to fulfill their wishes…

Do we know now what's wrong with us?

Dress Code

All my life, people have told me that I have no dress sense. :-) So, I know how it feels when someone tells anyone that.

Once upon a time, I never used to care much (I still don't, but act like I do!) about my attire just like our Indian cinema heroes. I always found these guys beating me to it though.

I never wore a pink pair of trousers with an equally pink shirt and pink shoes, pink socks and pink gloves to match etc. Seeing their enthusiasm, I always believed they had matching pink undergarments too. However, my critics never noticed it I think and put me on an equal pedestal with them.

When I got married, my wife also started telling me this and I decided to learn what this was all about. Day by day, I changed my wardrobe to "neat", "cool" shirts and trousers. I discarded all my so called "gaudy" coloured attire and replaced them with "neatly" striped, plain and small checked light coloured shirts and dark matching trousers.

Last year, in August or so, cable tv got regulated in Madras. Before that, I used to watch National Geographic, Discovery Channel and a myriad other interesting channels and was learning better dress code and other things by the day.

After this regulation, these channels along with other watchable channels became paid channels and anyone wanting to see them had to buy a set-top box and pay extra money for them.

The cable tv operator near our house actively dissuaded me from buying a set-top box saying that the concept will fail and this clamp will be released soon. So, I believed and haven't gone for this technology at home yet. The same is the case with 99.999999% of people in Madras. We don't get any watchable channel within city limits.

The streets beyond the city limits are exempt and enjoy all the channels for free at our expense. This CAS was clamped on Delhi too and it was promptly lifted. The guys there lack patience I think. Why did they have to agitate to have it lifted and succeed in their attempt too? See us here. How patiently we are waiting for it to be lifted like good citizens.

You might be wondering why I am giving you all this crap. I will come to the point shortly.
So, in the absence of any watchable channels, I am having to contend with the singaporean news (sometimes read in Chinese). I have picked up some chinese by the way. The chinese don't like being picked up like that though. The big news I always get to see is if someone is caught in a lift in some southeast asian country for twenty minutes etc and so on. I assume here that you have a fertile imagination.

Another channel that caught my attention was FTV. This is a free channel. This is being aired for the past four or five years I think without any inhibition. Some righteous members of our government in the centre at that time made some noises about banning it. I don't know what happened. Their malady would have been cured after they were made to watch it for a couple of hours I think.

Whatever it is, it was an alternative channel. After watching it for half an hour, the dress code that I so painstakingly learnt in the last few years got dismantled brick by brick.

The attires were so nice that you could tell the marital status of the women models and the religion of the male models from a distance if you had the discerning eye.

These people who are attired in such divine garments come walking down what is called a ramp slowly but surely, stop at its edge, look at the camera in a tantalising way and walk back equally slowly and surely. On both sides of this "ramp", there are about a few hundred sane looking people people seated with great interest showing on their faces. They might be enthusiasts, but don't wear any of these divine dresses. Instead, they mostly wear glasses (do they double as
binoculars?) and sit with a notebook and pen in their hands.

First of all, I never understood why or how these guys got to sit there of all the places, and what the hell the notebook was doing there, and what in the world they were noting down.

I then learnt that the models who were gliding on the aisle were making 21st century unisexual fashion statements in their birthday clothes.

Such fashion shows have become the norm in Indian cities too. Calcutta found an interesting way to get rid of this. A couple of years ago, after their maiden show in Calcutta, the models came back to Bombay swearing that they will never attend another show there.

The sane hundred or so that usually sit on either side of the ramp with note books in hand resorted to some pinching etc. it seems. People can take a clue here on how to cure it, if they think this is a problem.

I also don't know why the above is a free channel in India and why Discovery and National Geographic Channels are paid channels. I think this channel would have been paid for in the right sums at the right places. What do you think?

I am willing to shift to the code that the above channel prescribes, but I am wondering where I will keep my hand-kerchief, my car keys, my credit cards, my wallet, my cell phone, my comb etc.. if I do. After that half hour of watching that channel, I decided that I had enough tv for one life and joined some internet forums. Now, I come here to enjoy the WWF fights that take place every evening. I am quite confused. Should I put on my recently gifted "red" shirt or not?