Thumb Rules For Writers

William Safire's columns on Language have always been fun to read, his political columns though have often left me gritting my teeth. (Thank god, then, that he stopped them.)

Here is a piece that I collected from somewhere:

Thumb Rules For Writers

William Safire's rules for writers

Remember to never split an infinitive.

The passive voice should never be used.

Do not put statements in the negative form.

Verbs has to agree with their subjects.

Proofread carefully to see if you words out.

If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.

A writer must not shift your point of view.

And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.) Don't overuse exclamation marks!!

Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.

If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.

Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.

Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.

Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.

Always pick on the correct idiom.

The adverb always follows the verb.

Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.

The Last Nizam

The Last Nizam
by John Zubrzycki

“After kissing the Threshold of Your Throne, it is humbly submitted to the Great and Holy Protector of the World, Shadow of God, Mighty Holder of Destinies, Full of Light and Most Elevated among Creatures, the Exalted, May God’s Shadow Never Grow Less, may God Protect Your Kingdom and Your Sultanate, Most humbly I beg to submit….”

That was the way you asked the Nizam of Hyderabad, if you were a noble, to leave Hyderabad to go to Poona to the races.

You bent low, like you were in Ruku for salat – you hand touched your forehead and falling to the ground, seven times – in the presence of His Excellent Highness, The Nizam of Hyderabad. John Zubrzycki saya a dozen time but that is not true. The Mughal Emperor got a niner, the Nizam, always in allegiance to the Mughal Emperor (and later to British) got a sevener. I was there, I did it as a toddler with my uncle, before a scruffy looking man who looked poorer than our gardener and handy job man, Chunnu Mamoo.

John Zubrzycki’s book “The Last Nizam” it a delicious slice of history, for those interested in that part of the world, for those interested in the intricacies of the Rise and Fall of dynasties.

At one time considered the richest man in the world, with no real count ever made of his wealth. Olympic sized swimming pool could be filled with his diamonds, the whole of Broadway could be paved with his pearls, his gold was not counted in ounces but tons.

And Mukarram Jah, the heir to the wealth (and the Last Nizam), the heir to the Caliphate spent it, lost it in one lifetime declared himself bankrupt.

I have always been interested in history, especially that of the Deccan Plataeu, so I found it immensely readable. John Zubrzycki is no William Dalrymple but the book, mostly, is a good read.

It is a study in how power and wealth is aqcuired, maintained and lost. An old Sanskrit saying comes to mind:

San Sapoot Toh Dhan Kyon Sanchay

San Kapoot Toh Dhan Kyon Sanchay

Shorter Novels

I have increasingly become a fan of shorter novels. I have not read On Chesil Beach, Bibliobibuli recommends it and I must get it soon. I enjoyed God of Small Things very much, and it was a relatively short novel, so was Incident of Dog at the Night Time, enjoyable that.

Life of Pi was not that long either, I was enthralled by it. I picked up the House of Blue Mangoes three times before I could finish it.

Exceptions were there, I re read Atlas Shrugged recently, in small tiny print of the paperback version and still could go through it with ease. Considering that I could thread a needle with ease at the time when I first read it and now not as much. But even the small print did not deter me from reading Ayn Rand.

There have been of course, even more exceptions, where the novel just captures your imaginations and the shortness of time just doesn’t seem to matter. That is happening with Divisadero now.

Fictional Characters

When you sit down to think about it – other characters appear in the horizon of memories, fictional characters that made a huge difference at the time. Some that left indelible imprint on you and changed you in a small – maybe imperceptible – way.

Howard Roarke, from Fountainhead: I remember being spell bound by that book, my first taste of Ayn Rand till later I went searching for her Atlas Shrugged.

Or Mr Chips. The lovable old man from Good Bye Mr Chips.

Fictional Characters

If there was no God, it would be necessary to invent one.

For someone who writes fiction, or wants to, inventing characters is necessary, characters that last in the readers’ minds, weeks, months and years after they have read them.

Which true blooded reader can ever forget “Call me Ishmael…” or Raskalnikov? Or how truly embedded are characters like Scarlet O’Hara, Beck and Saleem Senai are in our psyche?

Have you not, if you are over forty, at least, chuckled even once at the pompous Mr Pickwick’s eccentricities?

I had a bunch of school girls come in the other day for a one day workshop in ceramics. Nothing worthwhile can be achieved in a day but the idea was to introduce them to clay and its beauty. So once they had created a couple of pinched and coiled pots I began what my wife calls Shakespearizing.

They are form five girls and I expected them to be well – lets just say – a little read.

“Give each of them pots, girls, a name from a fictional character.” From English books, added.

I certainly did not expect Saleem Senai or Leopold Bloom from them, much less Raskalnikov or Lenny. I expected, with a hopeful heart to hear a Jane Eyre, a Phillip Phirip a David Copperfield. I held my breath as I scanned the faces, would someone surprise me with a Shylock, a Desdemona? I perhaps hoped that some one would turn the tables on me and say: George Wingrave, the funny idiot from Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat.

I did get reluctant answers: Two fought over who could get the rights to Harry Potter. Others settled on Snow White, Cinderella and Minnie Mouse. My heart perhaps would have found solace if someone had chosen Happy, Dopey, Bashful, Grumpy or any other name of the dwarfs. These were budding youth and all I got was infantile characters from them.

I should have gone for movies perhaps and asked for characters from the celluloid. I would not have hoped for, even there, a Hannibal Lecter, Vito Corleone or even a measly Morpheus. I wonder if I could have elicited a heartwarming answer.

We need to make our kids read more, dammit.

Here is one for those that drop by here from time to time. Tell us about the fictional character that stayed with you for the longest time.

As for me, it was Nora Helmer from A Doll’s House. Though many others have jostled for space from time to time.

Second Hand Book Stalls

I was perhaps the first time in years that I faulted and defaulted. I did not write, not even an half hour a day nor read, not even an hour a day. That should be the basic minimum, shouldn’t it? Even when things are tugging you in all directions, nothing seems to be going right. Especially when nothing is going right.

I creaked my way to read blogs that have been the staple, looking for that spark to get me out of melancholic lethargy; to get me off procrastinating.

Nut among the reminiscing of the Darya Gunj book stalls, there was still more melancholic news. Paley passed away, bver read her books, but I mourn the passing of every author. And then heard of Aini Apa. The hennaed hair came back to memory. As Zafar Anjum at DreamInk pointed, she made quite an impression on those that read Urdu literature.

Even though her Aag Ka Darya (River of Fire) was universally acclaimed as her best word, I enjoyed her Patjhar Ki Awaz ( The Voice of Autumn) even more.

Darya Gunj : never been there, would one day like to. A friend told me once: It is a pilgrimage to those that love books.

I haven’t made that pilgrimage yet, but I did go to the place that started it all. Connaught Place. In the late seventies, early eighties, as he dusk settled on Lutyen’s city, its imposing architechture first would fall int a gloomy silence that would be shattered away in minutes. Booksellers came, in vans and bicycles, some carried their wares on their, back, a whole family sometimes. And I wondered how close the scene must have been when the pyramids were being made, worker trooping in from all over to build a pyramid of books that might last until midnight and slowly fade away to beging again the next day.

There were all sorts of books available: fiction and non, good books and bad. There were no bars. You might be sixteen, if you wanted an old copy of Playboy; you could just pick up and pay for the well perused - sometimes semen stained - copy. I bought, excited at being able to, my first books by Anonymous. “Him,” “Her,” “They.”

I don’t remember today what the story was or what the plot was. It must have been good for I finished it quite quickly and went back for more.

There was something for everyone, sold by book sellers more knowledgeable than most librarians I had met. There were books by Enid Blyton, if you wanted to buy some for your kids, there were Nick Carter stories, melodramatic cases fought by Perry Mason. Until today I wish I had a secretary like Della Street.

I bought a whole set of National Geographic from 1957 to 1962 at Rupees 1.20 per magazine. The logistics of carrying it back to the shack I called home then was a nightmare; the whole thing probably weighed more than I did.

I bought there too, my first copy of Paradise Lost.

There were other such stalls too, dearer to me. The one that lines of the walls of present day Nizam’s College for Women in Hyderabad. Now, I don’t really know if it was the beautiful girls trooping out of its gates that made the shops all that more alluring. Maybe so but the boks there were a collection I drooled over, the booksellers helpful. There was every book that could be found.

I have no idea if they are still there, if they aren’t, it is a big loss to the city and the people who love books.

Death and Taxes

The cliché holds true I suppose. You can’t cheat them, delay one under a respirator, in a artificially induced heartbeat and drugs created by billion dollar companies. But you can’t escape it. You just can’t.

Death and taxes, the two old coots that have man since the beginning of life. Maybe the apple was the Creators internal revenue and Adam tried to snick a bite of it. That would of course change the course of human knowledge, It then be Taxes and Death. Hard to the ears when you say, not as smooth flowing but truth never was.

My brother-in-law passed away recently. He was around my age, robust and healthy one month and then taken in by some very malignant form of cancer that was being misdiagnosed as gastritis by our very knowledgeable Dr Houses around here. A month later he was a skeleton of a man. The first chemotherapy session zapped the will out of him.

My friend Antares say he has unsubbed from the three D’s, death being one. I must learn that art, the techniques required for it. For each time a death occurs it kicks me in the shin. For this death came on top of another, hardly a month earlier his uncle had passed on. The blow must have been harder for the mother to lose a brother and son in a month.

My wife was distraught, he was her only brother.

The week following his death was riddled with death too. A neighbor, first of all, buried now right next to him, a friend in Seremban, a friend in KL. An old class mate from the school days. Someone I had just met recently after a long, long time.

A mackle of deaths that numbed me to silence for a while, into morose contemplation, in sullen meditation just wanting to distance myself from reality, an attempt that never ever succeeds.