It was
easy. A notebook, pen, or pencil, a convenient knee to facilitate
writing; later type it up as a hard copy, double-spaced, ready for
imaginary publication. Diligently stored in an arch file. Lost in the
cobwebs and dust of time today.
Today.
Today, ideas float in my head, demanding to be written, preserved for
posterity. The laptop, on for the last 12 hours is somewhere else as
I sit on the terrace of my barsati, open, exposed to the southern
breeze. A kilometre or more absolutely ahead of me is an ugly
monstrosity of a multi-storied residential apartment building, its
sight covered by four palm trees which wave about in the strong
breezes. There will be no rain tonight. I can see stars.
To go
back into the room, away from the cooling breezes, and write these
words is too much of an effort. Lethargy is engraved in me.
**********
The
year-old government has an anthem. Vibrant voices sing in mournful
chorus piped through acoustically deficient loudspeakers (not
microphones, as many have stated) at the traffic junctions, replacing
the always mournful versions of Rabindrasangeet which had been
playing there for the last few months. At least there was a choice in
that repertoire. Now its just one of those patriotic, marching sort
of tunes reminiscent of the movies of the 50s, sickly-sweet, on a
perpetual loop, guaranteed to piss you off.
The
music self-procreates, constantly regenerating, exponentially
spreading from one traffic junction to another. It's like the issues
of mis-governance of the party in power that is a leading topic of
the constant chatter in cyberspace. Still, I want to empathize.
Mamata Banerjee is known for her honesty and her complete
non-involvement in so many scams in which so many leaders are so
implicated, not excluding a few from her own party. On the other
hand, a retired justice who now heads the Press Council, calling her
dedicated to serving her state and her nation, smacks of senile
naivete.
After
34 years of suave and urbane corruption of not just the body politic
but also of the mind, the people of Bengal were willingly lulled into
a false situation of “everything's all right, things happen, just
get back to your mediocre cultural aspirations and leave business to
us”, we are expecting too much too fast from the new Chief
Minister. She certainly needs her full five year term. At the same
time, I can only hope she sees sense and stops tilting at windmills
to get on with the real things.
**********
A
recent amendment to the law protecting copyright is aimed at ensuring
lifelong royalty to creative contributors like singers, song writers,
script writers etc. Till now these royalties accrued to the producer
and/or the label or company which released and marketed creative
works commercially and otherwise. Most creative people got the shit
end of the stick when their works made money over and above the
fees/costs agreed upon. These were never shared by the
producers/manufacturers, and yet those creative works were known by
their creators and not the producers. So this is a positive move, but
how it works in real life is a whole different ball game.
This
then leads me to consider the actual act of copying, replicating,
duplicating, in other words, plagiarising.
Recently,
cyberspace has had me and some others generally discussing
plagiarism. It arose with words quoted from a Steven Spielberg film
which I commented seemed to have been lifted from a Bob Dylan song
written a decade or more before the movie. One of these persons has
taken it to heart and has thrown Mark Twain's words about the subject
of copying at me, palpably irate at my possible accusation of the
great Spielberg 'lifting'. The reverential and defensive use of
Twain's words is similar to when they say that the quoting of the
Scriptures is the last recourse of the Devil.
Two
points need consideration here. First, I respect Mark Twain and his
creative works and uphold him as a great story-teller and one of the
finest writers in American Literature. However, I’m not naïve
enough to believe every thing he has said and written as gospel truth
or as some tenets I need to live by. I am permitted to differ.
Secondly,
I started off by saying this was about plagiarising. The dictionary
defines plagiarise as “to copy (ideas, passages of text, etc) from
someone else's work and use them as if they were one's own”.
This
then was my bone of contention. I had a few times commented on posts
on many subjects made by this person where I had, instead of taking
an accusative, confrontational attitude, merely posted the link from
where this gent had so obviously obtained his material, done a good
Ctrl C + Ctrl V job and not acknowledged his source. A gentle
reminder to next time quote and acknowledge his source. He did so a
couple of times in what I thought was a rather reluctant manner, and
then went back to plagiarising.
How I
knew he was plagiarising is because of his employment of language.
Normally, he writes with innumerable grammatical and spelling errors,
never bothering to use the spellchecker wasting away in his
computer's word processor. And then he would post stuff which
compared to his own writing was impeccable in its construction,
spelling and ideas. And how did I confirm his plagiarism? That's
what's wonderful about the interweb. You can find out anything about
anything if you use a slight amount of intelligent, logical thinking.
And Google.
The
man, admittedly, has a wide range of interests and topics he wants to
share with people on the social forums. That's a good thing because
computers connected to the internet have made this ridiculously
easy. At the same time, not giving and acknowledging the sources of
your shared information and posting them without actually saying they
are your own, is a crime to me. And more especially because the man
is also faculty at a premier institution in Calcutta, in charge of
impressionable minds, as he is a well-known personality in the
corporate communications world of the city for the last couple of
decades.
**********
What
is work culture? Even Wikipedia has no entry of it, though they do
have one on 'organizational culture' where they warn you that the
article requires clean up and they don't sound too happy about the
entry at all. I see it as a tangible and intangible environment
outside home, where people can be sincerely and gainfully occupied
with the work they are good for, and be able to do it competently and
honestly. And do so in a cheerful atmosphere of cooperation and
collaboration. Leading to progress and satisfaction all round. Human
nature as wishfully conceived by optimistic me.
In
truth... need I say it? The truth is, of course, the opposite in most
cases.
I've
been gainfully employed for at least two-thirds of my life and I have
damned good experiences of interacting with people who are paying for
certain abilities I have. And yet they always surprise me, it hurts,
when people do things they otherwise criticise. Only because it
affects them.
Real
human nature again.
I have
certain time-tested, established, and basic ways of conducting myself
at work. So I find this much-touted 'work culture' depressing, and
atrocious. Why can't people keep to the times and schedules mutually
agreed upon, even when there are loopholes to wriggle out of such
agreements? Why, in this day and age of instant digital communication
possibilities, do people not respond one way or another on project
outcomes one has discussed endlessly? What are all these meetings
about? Every time I go to meet people on scheduled appointments, I
usually find them busy in other meetings, so I must wait. When does
the work happen, if all they do is have meetings? Work is kept
pending for a variety of reasons, usually the most mundane: “Haven't
had time to see it[/think on it/action it] yet, boss. Give us a few
days.” This is after quite many days have already passed. And like,
it's been quite a few months since we all agreed upon action and
final outcome. In one case, more than a year.
And if
this sounds like some fictitious government bureaucracy example,
you're wrong. These are real, and happened with reputed,
well-respected, private corporations and institutions.
A
Facebook friend posted this recently: “Why are some people always
late? More importantly, why do they show disrespect for other
people's time? This paper explores both cultures (the Japanese take
it as a personal insult if you're late; Indians think time is an
illusion) and individuals (punctual people win in the end, it's
mathematically proven - P(k) = E [A(k + X)] − C). This is a MIT
paper, so don't expect humour - though there's the odd touch of wit
(In Brazil, 20% of watches and clocks don't work properly, so 1 out 5
have a good reason to be late).” The link to the paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=317621
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