One Fine Bond!

One day in the mail came Ruskin Bond's letter, and boy was I unable to control my excitement!
Goes without saying I feel fuzzy each time I see this letter. Smell of paper and all intact... and some feel-good fuel to turn back to.

His latest book Stories Short and Sweet (Red Turtle 2013) would make for some great reading for all ages

 

Where is, what about, Ottawa?

Sorry for the long sabbatical!

I was sidetracked by the World Book Reviews blog. But largely, I was adjusting to Arctic/Atlantic climates, because, you know, minus 44 degrees Centigrade is teeshirt weather.

Since My RitetoRead is the more city-portrait-calendar-of-events-in-town kind of blog, I return with posts about present cities and future ones too.

Most non-Canadians assume I must be living in Toronto when I tell them where I am in Canada. Even when I slowly enunciate "Ott-awa", the city still doesn't ring many bells. In Canada of course, everyone knows Ottawa. The house of big government.  Parliament Street. The Parliament. The Government. And until not too long ago, Stephen Harper. 

But, one rad mayor and his 2017 Team are about to change all of that. Watch out for some major rebranding ops underway for Ottawa in 2017 as the nation turns 150 years and its "old" sleepy capital gets a facelift and image makeover with the numerous activities planned for that year. I was glad when Ottawa's IABC event came along and explained all that was in store for this city in 2017. Read my next post to find out what's in store for Ottawa 2017. 

Photo credit: MapofCanada.org

An old poem!

circa 2006: The Wittenberg Review of Literature & Art

- With grateful thanks to dear friend Indraroop R. Mohanti for scanning/dearchiving.

Happy 10th Birthday Takladweep!

Exactly a decade ago today, I was a schoolgirl, emceeing a book release function. The Uzbek Ambassador to India at that time, released my debut novel in my school's outdoor amphitheater during a very sunny morning assembly. A panel comprising two of my favourite (rival) classmates, engaged in a vibrant book discussion about the characters and plot in Adventure on Takladweep. The audience asked lots of questions. I replied in long form. Newspapers and TV stations dialled in for sound bytes and one-on-one interviews. I felt full, and then the hollow ache of having ticked off a dream. Ruskin Bond's hand written letter to me arrived as a pleasing surprise. But memories from ten years back, feel so far away now!

Today, as I brace myself for new content and new media in new classrooms with new teaching tools, I am beginning to reinterpret the publishing environment and understand what it means to take the onus and responsibility to publish something (not entirely your own) as I wrap up MetroGame, the travelling App for Urban Professionals. There are no static processes. Good content will flourish, nourish and be cherished, and that is the bottomline. Apps will pass too. Publishing is for believers, die hard optimists and cautious pessimists alike. This is the present, tense. 

In search of an Icon

Been trying out some icon designs for my Travelling App for the Urban Professional. It's an interesting process, and i think with icon design you can get away with lower resolution images than you would in a book cover. I need something not grainy, not noisy, but simple and expressive. It's kind of hard, but it's like settling for the perfect gift. You'll know it when you hit it. Kind of proud of my publisher logo, though --says all I mean.  

App Thumbnail # 1

Why so grainy? Beautiful image, low res. Blurrrrrrrrrrrrr. Is a volcano misleading? Will people suspect/expect sorcery? This is from Fjallbacka, Sweden.

                                                                         Draft #2

Right now I prefer version 2, but I'm still not happy with the quality of my image. It resembles a postage stamp though. 

Scotland's National Book Town blooms in the Spring

Wigtown, I repeated.

The librarian hung up her hands in dismay.

I say Galloway, and it evokes a slow, bemused response.

Few have heard of Scotland's national book town. Fewer know it is slouched in the Machars area of Galloway where River Cree Estuary meets the Solway firth, in the backdrop of the Galloway hills. Coastline, hills, the sea, and the ferry to Ireland, typical south western climate, all defining characteristics of the region.

But those who do know the area, will warn you, there is nothing to do in Wigtown, a town which you can walk around in twenty minutes flat! Not many know of Wigtown as a geographic location, least of all for what it's most famous: Scotland's largest boutique showcase of about 20 antiquarian bookshops, internet book warehouses, and studios dealing second hand books and older and new collections too, crossing all genres from film, music, Tartan noir and topography, world history, local mythology and combat aviation to name the very least. 

The goal of a book town is to offer a sustainable model, to regenerate the economy with its tourism dimension, and in the mid nineties, Wigtown entered the competition to be a Scottish book town because it was crumbling beneath its towering poverty. So, when Wigtown won the bid in 1997, it got saved, most booksellers will tell you! Ordinary buildings got a makeover, shops refurbished, a gust of entrepreneurial winds with some government help and nationalist sentiment --after all Wigtown is the only National Book town in the UK-- all stirred up a heady mix; and then the Wigtown literary festival arrived, and tourism figures scaled new peaks!  

A dry region largely, that is second only to the Highlands, in hosting the lowest population density in all of  Scotland, Wigtown blossoms in the spring, with the onset of Easter and up until October a month past the annual Wigtown book festival, drawing over twelve thousand visitors each year (figures having doubled over the past three years),  literary celebrities and commoners alike. Local talents (from Dumfries and Galloway) are brought to the fray in the festival within a festival titled Wigtown Ink! Workshops, author readings, publishers and publications, all gather with bibliophiles and those in the book trade.

The Wigtown Festival Office and Library

A Tale of two Harbours

The consortia of Wigtown booksellers are thus close knit and often run into each other only at book auctions and book events.

Richard Booth, the self-styled King of Hay-on Wye, first pegged the words Book Town and instigated the first book town model of sustainability in 1961 in Wales. He moves around the world tagging booktowns (example Redu in Belgium, 1984) wherever he feels appropriate. His visits to Wigtown are a big draw and the booksellers love his speeches.  

I personally enjoyed the range of books and music in most of the shops especially those charting local topography. The cosy seating, warm fireplaces and a never quiet, never busy atmosphere to most of these shops, offering window side views into gardens, hills and the city marquee, were a soul rush. The booksellers will rush to tell you, and unlike in Aberfeldy's Watermill, during Christmas, the walk ins are nothing to compete with at the city stores or in the high street, as people are lesser likely to buy second hand books as gifts, but walk-ins peak during the festival time, where there isn't enough place to even house the authors sometimes, jokes a vendor. The biggest challenge to selling books here (as everywhere) is people's changed buying habits in an Amazonian climate, and many sellers vend their own books through Abe, Amazon, Alibris and the likes, after paying commission.   

While the oldest book town model was created in Wales, other booktowns and villages have emerged around world. In the United Kingdom, there are only three Book towns, Wigtown in Scotland, Hay-on-Wye in Wales, and Sedburgh in Cumbria, England. An entire list of International Booktowns can be found here. 

Do scroll down for more images from the quaint, bookish world of Wigtown.

The largest (and oldest) bookshop in Wigtown

The ubiquitous Wigtown Book Cushions done by local artisans

Books and pottery are an inescapable mix

 

ReadingLasses is interesting wordplay as the only bookshop in the UK that sells and promotes books by women and for women, and they host a cafe-bakery and B&B too.

Getting Here
By Bus : From Glasgow to Newton Stewart (via Ayr), and then the bus/stagecoach to Wigtown
By Rail : From (Glasgow to) Girvan to Newton Stewart (via Ayr), and then the bus/stagecoach to Wigtown
By Car : Arrive at Newton Stewart and take the turn to Wigtown (A714) at the A75 roundababout

Anything You Want

The most awe inspiring book I read in 2011 was Derek Sivers' Anything you Want: 40 lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur (The Domino Project). An entrepreneur is an anti-perfectionist. In a world where it is so easy to pander to everybody else's ego except your own, Sivers only reminds you, that a life worth living begins with knowing exactly what makes you happy, and what's worth doing. 

A professional musician, perpetually low on cash (but never broke), Sivers began by selling his own music online, and helping a few friends of his sell their music online too, until he found himself accidentally caught up in the business of selling CDs! Quickly he scribbled his dream template for www.CDbaby.com, a start up mission that would power independent musicians by distributing their work online. The year was 2003, a watershed moment in the American music industry when Apple iTunes opened out to independent musicians and others like Yahoo! Rhapsody, MSN and Napsters followed suit. And then the punch in the gut, as Sivers narrates how he, the 40$ (per song) distributor of independent record labels, got dissed by Mr. Steve Jobs, followed by Apple's quick volte-face to allow for all CDbaby's music to be uploaded onto iTunes! Since the episode, Sivers decided to make digital distribution of music a free service. However, his continuing anecdotes only ride up a climax along a learning curve as he goes on to talk about near bankruptcy (on account of omission in bureaucratic detail), and spiraling to better times and worse until he has had what only Joseph Heller might dub "Enough," enough for him to send off his baby to a reputable Music education trust, a loving family of fresh blood, to retire into solitude, a life of more programming, writing, planning and inventing!

Published by Seth Godin's The Domino Project

A few pointers that Derek Sivers elucidates in this scintillating, lucid one-hour read include:

• Business is not about money, but about making dreams come true for others and yourself
• Making a company is a great way to improve the world while improving yourself
• Design your Perfect World
• Never do anything just for money
• Answer the calls for help
• Improve, Invent
• You don't know what people really want until you start doing it
• No money is an advantage
• You can't please everyone
• Make yourself unnecessary to the running of your business
• Be happy

"If you think true love looks like Romeo and Juliet, you'll overlook a great relationship that grows slowly. If you think your life's purpose needs to hit you like a lightning bolt, you'll overlook the little day-to-day things that fascinate you."

It's good to live in a world without maybes. But it's also incredibly difficult, and for that a flying kudos  to Mr. Sivers, for sharing the love of his life in these entrepreneur diaries. A palatable end of the year, must read, and must do!

This should not be in the footnote, but a very Happy New Year to you all! YES i know we're already gloating in the better half of January, way past a sluggish beginning, a big round of Cheers to all readers, from my mug of hot steaming chocolate in the neighbourhood pub :-) aka living room.

IQ84 stays with you, even if you may not want to pick up the sequel

Haruki Murakami captures for me an ageless world, obsessively introspective to a T. Each of his characters,  as mystical as the other: An aspiring writer, a female late-adolescent delinquent, a policewoman, a writer like dyslexic teenager, men in power, men without power --neo-human oddballs trapped in steamy lives as close to nature, as far from order. What moves me is the restraint and controlled dialogue between characters, stemming from the author's own discipline, I began recognizing and falling in love with in his previous work of non-fiction, What I do When I talk about Running (Harvill Secker), which is of course, a stringent (but no less warm) insight into the transformation of a non-runner into a triathlete, and how this coincided with if not exactly spurred his writing journey.  

'Decent Motives don't always produce decent results. And the body is not the only target of rape. Violence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.'

Book One traces the interconnected lives of protagonists Aomeme and Tengo who with their altar characters in their professional and private universes are living elevated lives, the base for this trilogy. This first book is not a mystery story, but the mere backdrop for a mystery which thickens around an incident or a series of incidents, in fact a massacre, or perhaps several massacres and hitherto concealed religious crimes and heinous acts of violence perpetrated by a religious commune called the Sakigake--which sounds "more like the kind of name that would be attached to a Japanese super express train than to a religion."

Daunted by their own misery memoirs, protagonists play police and criminal, adopting and stripping ethics to suit their goals, as we follow a teeny bopper dyslexic author's curve to celebrity, her academic guardian, a grandiose expansionary editor, a restrained schoolteacher and ghost novelist, and a daring woman whose only salvation is her one-sided love for a boy she has never met since she was ten which she likens to the Tibeten Wheel of the Passions--"as the wheel turns, the values and feelings on the outer rim rise and fall, shining or sinking into darkness. But true love stays fastened to the axle and doesn't move." Can one rewrite history in order to fix the present? Is there another world with two moons that has a history different from our present world with a single moon? And can only the gifted few have access to both worlds?

If George Orwell's 1984 coined the famous Big Brother gaze,  IQ84 seethes with hegemonic 'Little People' who are constantly policing the way we view history, the future. The technological awareness that graces this story, is a bit too advanced for it to be actually set in 1984. However, the violence, conversations, characters with Murakamian sex and criminal pathos, all add up to a slow, gripping read.  It sent a few chills down my spine, and had me shrieking once the lights went out. "Crime was not the responsibility of the person himself as that he was led astray by moonlight," explains the least forthcoming character in this book, after differentiating the lunatic (someone whose sanity is temporarily seized by the moon) from the insane (someone with an innate mental problem) to her boyfriend.  

This book has spiritual finesse with all the predictable leads that come from synthesis and perfection, and while I may not exactly run to pick up book 2 and book 3, I am certain of a linguistic feast and emotional retreat from the ordinary.  Moreover, Murakami's characters visit me in my sleep and waking hours: because a Murakami character has no character greater than that, ie., he/she is a Murakami.

Travelling for a bookshop, reading for a destination

I travel towards books, and if I could, I would travel for a living, towards books. This December, to get away from all the distraction offered by myriad festivities, I set about scouting book couture, in the heart of the  Scottish highlands. 

I visited Aberfeldy in Highland Perthshire last week, to stop at UK's independent bookshop of the year The Watermill. Home to three stories of books including a contemporary art studio at the top and cafe in the basement with a fireplace, the Watermill sees a daily quick turnover of travellers, readers and backpackers. Every floor churned my travelling juices. The by equal parts messily stacked and equal parts artsy decor with books overflowing from tables was attractive, when not a grim reminder of the price of estate. The ambiance was that of a gift shop's, with everyone, Christmas shopping here. There were no discounts, but more variety in books than you could imagine in all of the Scottish Highlands here. Move over Scotch and chocolate, the average European wants a warm happy read at the end of a festive supper.  

Gift Books Signature Jamie Oliver!

International titles

Tintin mania and an iron chest

Books are the gateway to a city's culture, economy, and industry. They drive a city. Bookstores in the UK I have visited so far have been mostly chains, high street retailers and the odd independent bookstore. The Watermill by far is the most picturesque and self contained store, with a gleefully sustainable turnaround of footfalls including roadside travellers, youngsters and seniors alike (although I did not notice any children and an entirely empty children's book room), book club members, working men and artistes. A large section of the bookshop's lists are devoted to travel books and unique indigenous travel books, guides and anthologies that are exciting and heartening to who wear their map on the sleeve. Titles that caught my eye separate from the Lonely Planet, Rough Guides or other commercially popular series, were travel accounts like: At the Loch of Green Corrie (Quercus), How to Climb Mont Blanc in a Skirt (One World), Map Addict (Collins) among several others. Uncluttered by festive decor, yet retaining the spirit of all season charm, this inspiring venue has been awarded 4 star badge by the Scottish Tourism Board for the Year 2011.   Run by a couple from London Kevin and Jayne Mayanje, who after sending off their children to university were hillwalking in Aberfeldy Perthshire when they stumbled upon the Grade 1 listed oatmeal mill spread over 4500 square feet, built in 1825 and were attracted by the business proposition. While the stone exteriors of the building were intact, over £330,000 worth restorations were made inside the building to make it what it is today-- a thriving functional business, where lights are run on the live functioning watermill. The couple also runs the Homer homes and Gardens,  'vintage decor' shop in Edinburgh. Some of their vintage collection items are on display and for sale in The Watermill too. For instance the Tokyo based, Mahayuna series of lights including the one (pictured below) called the Goben now priced at about £369. A complete must-visit for traveling art fans, serious tourists and bibliophiles. 

Bestsellers and prizewinners

Local Global Fare

Modern fiction and Seasons' Greeting Cards

Hearth Warming

Art Studio and Exhibition

Audio Bookshelves

Art Titles from Phaidon Press, Aperture Foundation, etc. light is sourced by the watermill in function

Crime Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, Young Adults

Cafe and Bakery: food served until 16:00 and bakes and drink until 16:30. You can lounge until bookshop hours 17:00.

Goben from the Mahayuna series of Lights 

Getting there

The train from Stirling to Pitlochry is about one hour and follows the route: 

Stirling-> Bridge of Allan -> Dunblane -> Gleneagles -> Perth - > Dunkeld -> Pitlochry

Pitlochry Station: Recycled Garbage man bin not an uncommon sight in Roundabout Crossings all over Scotland

Pitlochry tracks

Walk to the bus stand on the main street in Pitlochry and wait to board 23C to Aberfeldy which includes a transfer of bus at Ballinluig . The second bus (also 23C but labelled 'Aberfeldy') takes you straight to Aberfeldy. 

Detours after Ballinluig: If, however, you want more value for your entire bus return ticket, you can get off at Grandtully from Ballinluig and arrive at Loch Tay (you'll see roadsign 'GRANDTULLY') so stay tuned to the road because the driver does not know you are unfamiliar with the route and won't stop unless you warn him in time). At Grandtully, visit the Highland Chocolatier opposite the bus stop :) and relish in the delicacies of homemade factory chocolate. 

GRANDTULLY: LOCH TAY and a Weak Bridge

Opposite Loch Tay and bus stop: Scottish Homemade Chocolate Center rolled in real fruit, spices and malts too many!

The bus from here on is infrequent, and by the hour (every 45 minutes or so), so time your hour to savor meaningful moments in the Legends Coffeehouse, or watching films on the making of cocoa and the world map of chocolate. Once done, hop back onto the bus with the same ticket and look out for the Dewar (pronounced dew-aar) Distillery. Request the driver to drop you here, and  run (the door for the tour closes  at 15:00 in the winter). Students get a whiskey tour for as cheap as 7 pounds, here, and there are more blending experiences that aren't too expensive and quite memorable. Now that you've settled in with the warm fuzziness of  malts, straighten up and bolt along the road, keep going straight (there is only one main road!) until you hit Chapel road, and continue on straight through the City Center of Aberfeldy, cross the square, and suddenly on a meandering right lane downhill you'll  spot a postcard pretty Stone dwelling, with the sign The Watermill. You have reached your destination!  

An offshoot lane from the main street, miss-able if you're not looking

Caveat: Buses are filled with locals and schoolchildren. Tourists rely less on public transport and arrive in couples or groups at the most and that too in private vehicles or group hires; but if you're solo and can sync your times with the pressure of public transport timing, you might just succeed with flying colours! People are calm and helpful if you get talking nicely, and won't bother you because they know you know your path. 

Why Stirling: I live and study in Stirling, Scotland's ancient capital.  Trapped in the love triangle with Edinburgh to the east and Glasgow to the west, all my travel is based out of this town that homes about 40000.   

An Indian city equivalent: This might sound cliched but I do sometimes see Nainital in Scotland, a country as colonially influenced, as pristine, and as fiercely independent in couture and consciousness. Uttarakhand, UK license plates are all that are missing. 

Image courtesy: The Gazetteer for Scotland (2011)

Also, even in this age of the (free) internet: Culture can never be free. Aye. So you better be sure what you want, exactly. It might very well be worth the expense.