On A Loose End

The media may be talking about Obama bending backwards to accommodate China by bending forward, but what we are missing is that in China the US has probably her biggest ally. And even if the general population does not seem to understand the importance of China to the United States, the fact is that it is China which is funding, in a major part, the seemingly good health of the American Economy. Consider this, the Chinese are carrying an American debt of $ 800 Billion. Do the American people know that America pays about $5o billion to China every year as interest? It is a different matter altogether that the interest also may be on paper. What happens when China decides to cash in on the bonds that it has collected over so many years? If any American knows the answer he will understand why Obama "stooped" to wish the Chinese premier. Anyway the more important issue for India is, "What the hell is America doing?" On one side is Pakistan, whom America is kind of shelt...

Update: Please visit the website http://www.litagency.com/ for your publishing needs. The concept of literary agents in India has not really taken off so far even though there are now some well known agencies whose presence cannot be ignored. But frankly if the number of agencies is lesser than the number of publishing houses, it can be surmised that the slush pile at the literary agencies will be much bigger than that at the publishing houses. WritersNet gives a list of 50 Literary agents/agencies in India. However be informed that the list is created by self-submission and is not validated, therefore if you are going to pick from the list, you do it at your own risk. I am not saying that they are not legitimate, I am just cautioning that there may be scam artists in that list. As a general guideline, anyone who is charging a reading fee should best be ignored. Agents are not supposed to be charging money, they take a commission out of your royalties after they sell the book. But ot...

It was in 2005 that I started writing a book, fiction, every living person's desire. Everyone has a story or two to tell and if the want is there he/she can definitely pen a book out of the story, but more often than not the story remains untold because of their own mental blocks and sometimes because writing a book or a novel becomes an overwhelming task after the first ten pages. It requires a great deal of motivation, perseverence and hard work to write a book. Anyway, I, for one, had too many stories floating in my head and there was only one way to free up the memory, get it out of my system. In 2005 I took the plunge and two years later I had finished my masterpiece. I think everyone who writes his/ her first book thinks that it is a masterpiece. During the process of writing and then subsequently after finishing it I was always scouring the Internet for resources for the first time author. There are hoards of websites for the first time author to take cues from but somehow t...

It was in 2005 that I started writing a book, fiction, every living person's desire. Everyone has a story or two to tell and if the want is there he/she can definitely pen a book out of the story, but more often than not the story remains untold because of their own mental blocks and sometimes because writing a book or a novel becomes an overwhelming task after the first ten pages. It requires a great deal of motivation, perseverence and hard work to write a book. Post shifted to new blog and rest of the post can be accessed at http://enemyintheranks.blogspot.com/2009/06/first-time-author-from-india.html

Speaking about it, it sounds so grand. President of India, the largest democracy in the world, of a country with a more than billion people. Wow, one must think, she has to be the most important person in the world and the most powerful one at that. The fact is that it is just the opposite. The fiasco at the Mumbai Airport on the 09 Feb 2009 once again highlighted the irrelevance of the Indian President in the country's affairs. On that day it seems that an Air India pilot narrowly averted a tragedy by steering his plane away from a IAF helicopter which was part of the President's entourage. No, the President was not on the helicopter which was in the line of danger, but the incident became NEWS because it was one of the three accompanying the President. Now the fact. The President of India was not on a world saving or even nation saving endevour when the incident took place. Nor was she attending any event of national significance. She was here in Mumbai to inaugurate the Glob...

The news channels as well as the news papers of the country are shamelessly covering the shameful event of Mangalore to no end. What happened in Mangalore is a major threat to the very idea of freedom. Freedom of any kind. Unfortunately this is not the first time the freedom in this country has been usurped by vested interests of some individuals, singly or collectively in a group. The politicians of the country and at times the law enforcement agencies in this country have time and again turned a blind eye to the perpetrators of such crimes and even when they have been forced to take action, which they have pretty reluctantly, they ensured that the guilty got away scot free. How impotent can a nation and her citizens get? What kind of a constitution did our forefathers make that permits gross violation and abuse of the tenets of the constitution as well as the laws of the land? Fanatic groups based on region, religion, caste, creed, language etc have been allowed to fester in this lan...

Opportunity knocks, but once. Opportunities are not lost, but are taken away by others. These are some phrases we grew up with. I remember them, so do many others, then why have the Indian politicians forgotten them. After having faced the brutal terror attack on Mumbai and with the irrefutable proof that Pakistan was behind the attacks, the Indian governing class and the bureaucracy have taken actions straight out of a rule book or maybe a "How to handle the aftermath of a terror attack" article. Or, maybe the Britishers left some guide book with the Indian leaders when they left the country. Someone needs to tell these politicians that all their books are dated and they need to get some innovation and fresh ideas to handle the issue. They have made the right noises to get the world opinion to side with the country, they have also got some of the world leaders to render advice to Pakistan, one which Pak does not care two hoots about and there has been some rhetoric on the In...