All quiet on the western front

Just finished reading Erich Maria Remarque's 'All quiet on the western front'. Quite an engrossing war novel. Its the story of a nineteen year old german boy, Paul Baumer, fighting in the World War I for a cause he doesn't know or understand is quite intense. Erich participated in the War himself , was hospitalized and lost his mother during that time, so the story is pretty much modelled around his own deep-rooted feelings on the purposelessness of war and the toll it takes on the people who participate in it. He gives away the lopsided nature of the war when refers to the fighting French, British and American soldiers as being inferior to german soldiers but having better rations, weaponry and tanks. In a way, the book is quite similar to Joseph Hellers Catch-22, except that Yossarian accepted the futility of the war and wanted to escape,feining ill health and madness while Baumer doesn't protest, he accepts his duty as a soldier and comes back to the front lines & trenches to do as commanded. Maybe because Yossarian was older. Remarque constantly reflects on the wretchedness and inhumanity of war and how soldiers are plain statistics in a war. Im Westen nichts Neues - nothing new on the western front. Dying German soldiers, the killing of British or French is part of the rigor of war-nothing new. How a war leads to a slow loss of interest in life ,increasing uncertanity of what's to happen when one return to normal work- almost dreading the thought emerges as stark reality through the key characters. Even as the one Baumer adores Stanislaus Katchinsky or Kat , who is so full of joie-de-vivre finally meets a bloody end, Baumer lives on unsure.
The book was banned in Germany and when Remarque wrote a sequel The road back about what would have happened if the soldier survives a war and returns to normal life, both his books were burnt. The movie versions ( 1930 and 1979) did better - both winning oscars for best picture.
Terrific book.

Archers in town

Dear Mr. Archer,

It was great meeting you at landmark the other day. Must confess that I have read many of your books and at one point, I owned over ten of them.

Have been wondering about quite a number of things about your writing-

a. It is quite evident that none of your books have been made as movies but have only made it to TV versions and adaptions. Do your plots not lend themselves to the movie format or is your asking price too high?

b. Is it true that in order to fight the advent of movies and TV, one tends to write more action centric novels and not character novels that you are good at. At the turn of the last century, there were many great books written -with long elaborate character sketches and a long winding scripts -all of which we bundle together as classics. The world war finished all that style of writing and gave birth to 'cold-war' writing with thrillers from - alistair maclean, forsyth, tom clancy, ian fleming, sheldon etc. focussed on the cold war and espionage. You have avoided all this and focused on drama. Are you afraid of action?

c. Everyone has a specialised in a certain form of fiction - Michael Chricton - science fiction; Grisham - legal, Tom clancy - cold war, Steven king - horror; each has had many movie version successes as action lends itself well to movies. You have stayed focussed on drama, relatiosnhips and middle class aspirations- more TV stuff than movies material.

With Paths of glory being a real life story and your next book being a re-writing of Kane and Abel- maybe you have finally run out of stories. In fact, the last 4 of your books are real life- including your prison diaries. In response to a query on your favourite books, you had said that 'The Count of Monte Christo'( I have always thought your favourite own book 'Not a penny more,not a penny less' was actually inspired from Dumas's novel ) and All quiet on the western front ( you happily signed this one for me) were your best and amongst your own books ,your wife liked 'As the Crow flies'. My favourite is 'First amongst equals'- liked everything about it from the title to the way the story pans out and the way it ends.

Hope to have a book of my own for you to sign when I meet you next time.

cheers
naveen

p.s. You are very right when you say that while we could accept coincidences in real life, we quite dislike them in stories.

What a win !

They say the PM will be the first to do a Nehru encore- do a two term in the parliament.Here's what I think worked for this govt. in teh elections-

1. This election was a formality - the govt. had handled and won in the past year many battles with the opposition so winning this war was a formality. The trust vote; the nuclear deal; the immediate political action after 26/11 - the PC move to Home, the instant CM change in Mah., the pursuit of Pakistan; the immediate action after Satyam- the enquiry, new board, the sale;the stock market management from letting it crash to 7500 and recover to 12000 and even the thorny Jagdish Tytler affair on the eve of elections- all of this in just the last year was a testinomy of a solid working govt.

2. Agendas : The BJP didn't puruse any agenda- they didn't chase the job-loss story, the fiscal deficit, the rising prices, the Satyam scam and just repeated the temple agenda as their leaders fought. The country had moved on. The left lost after three generations of ruling Bengal- they couldn't save the Nano jobs and prevented the nuclear deal which everyone thought was good for the country.

3. Leaders - I think Rahul Gandhi symbolizes youth and his entry has led to many many young people joining congress in leadership positions, BJP has none. Modi and Jaitley couldn't reconcile the rest of the leaders. Pramod Mahajan was missed. Not changing Vsundhrara raje scindhia cost them Rajastahan. Lalu ran out of funny one-liners while Nitish attempts to build roads like Hema Mailni's cheeks were rewarded. The PM is an economist, intelligent and clean guy.

4. Work on ground - Rahul worked in the hinterland for the last 2 odd years , making inroads into Mayavati turf, Mamata eroded the left with her victory on Nano, YSR freed hospitals from corporates and gave them to the poor, Karunanidhi delivered 60 lac TVs as promised, Shiela Dixit is awesome - running Delhi like a company and Shashi Tharoor is a cool guy - he walked across and cleared his posters in trivananthapuram. Sonia turned out to be a great leader, selflessly holding the fort together.

The next 5 years will rock.

Sensex at 25000 is my biggest bet.

Now what?

Arun: Hey, listen. Somethings happening to me.
Mohit: What?
Arun: In the last 4-5 weeks, I have met over 5-6 people from my past.
Mohit: You attended an alumni meet or something?
Arun: No, no. These are people from my distant past- my first boss of over 20 years ago, my class benchmate of over 30 years, my school friend after over 15 years and two collegue after over a dozen years.
Mohit: Wow! Must have been fun.
Arun: Thats the point. I didn't find it too much fun to connect.
Mohit: Why?
Arun: It foxed me, so I thought about it for a long time over last weekend. It seems to me now that the issue is over-familiarity. I had already sort of met them. With a linkedin profile peek , flikr photograph albums, facebook conversations , messanger chats, youtube videos, blogged thoughts and the texted twitter 24X7 shadowing, I knew what they had done every minute in the many many years that had passed between when I met them last and now. So when I met them it looked like I had met them last week !
Mohit: Ha
Arun : This is the age of extreme and instant familiarity. Imagine meeting the girl who sat on the same bench as you 30 years back and have nothing to say. Just because for the last 6 months you have exchanged so much information that you were almost on the same bench all along!
Mohit: You are so right.
Arun :The other day I met my first boss of 20 years back and we discussed things we could do together. There was no mention of the 20 years because that was what we discussed over the last 3 months !
Arun : Wonder how our relationships will be defined in the years to come with so much personal information hanging out in public, so furiously, so often.

Zoozoos for Bozos

The current Idea , Lead India and Tata Tea advt campaigns are wonderfully effective.
The fact that they were launched many months ahead of the elections means that they had the time to grow in peoples minds in an non-intrusive way. If they had been launched now, it would have been a normal campaign - communicate brand values by utilizing a current subject making it topical and create resistance in the minds of consumers.
Great marketing - good timing, great execution and packaging.

The Vodafone campaign is the most clutter breaking one I have seen in recent times. The Zoozoos are a rage - think of it - the communities of 26/11 , elections & cricket franchisees, all mostly in teh 25000 to 30000 range on facebook and youtube are half of the zoozoo community , around 65000. That too created with an under 25 days of exposure. For a brand to have lived many lives, it is only expected. Look at brand values of Orange (great recall even now- built on theatre and beethovan concerts) changing to Hutch ( re-built on the pug, innnovation- 10buck pack etc. and many many retail tie-ups) and then to Vodafone ( re-built on the pug+girl story last year , customer service, VAS and now zoozoos ) and yet retaining and growing customers keeping the core premium positioning intact.
Amazing !