A decade in Toronto - 13

Che - quiet, shy & handsome

I’ll continue with 2011 because when I look back at the year, I realise that a lot of things happened. And while it’s not possible to capture everything into this series, I do want to ensure that I don’t miss some important occurrences.

My involvement in the Festival of South Asian Literature and the Arts enlarged my circle of acquaintances in the creative world. I realized that the suburbs of Toronto – Mississauga, Brampton, and Oakville had a thriving cultural scene buzzing with events and programs and that South Asians were organizing most of these events.

I was invited to an exhibition of Hindi film posters – Picture House – organized by Ali Adil Khan and Asma Arshad Mahmood at the Art Gallery of Mississauga. It was a painstakingly put together exhibition, where Ali and Asma put a stamp of originality on a subject that could easily have become a sentimental and lachrymose, not to say banal, depiction of a dying art. 

I blogged rather animatedly about it, and my journalism teacher-turned-friend Teenaz Javat read it. She got me invited to the CBC’s Metro Morning show for a brief chat about the exhibition. (Read the blog: Picture House)

At IIFA, photo by Mariellen Ward

In late June, I was invited to participate in the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) awards at the Rogers Centre with Mahrukh, Che and Durga who was with us. The invitation was from my friend CP Thomas, who was doing the public relations for the event organizer Wizcraft (co-owner Sabbas Joseph used to be a colleague).

Thanks to CP, a serial entrepreneur and the publisher of Indian Voices, we got some of the best seats at the awards venue. The show belonged to Shahrukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra, and a bunch of film stars from the yesteryears. (Read the blog: IIFA in Toronto)

Farzana Doctor, the author friend who organizes the immensely influential Brockton Writers’ Series invited me to read at the September 2011 edition of the series along with Jessica Westhead and Pratap Reddy. She was greatly amused by the emails I exchanged to finalise my reading at the series and quoted from it verbatim while introducing me.

With Pratap and Jessica at Brocton Writers' Series

I have tremendous admiration and respect for Farzana. She gave key inputs to improve my manuscript and make it more “Canadian,” when I was struggling with it. Of course, by the time the manuscript emerged as a novel, a lot had already changed. At different stages of my writing process, she was willing to assist, suggest, promote and otherwise help in whatever way she could. Being a star author that she is, she’d forgotten my name by the time her third novel was launched.

Later that month, at the Word on the Street, I participated in the “Adopt a Writer” program with Jessica Westhead at the Word on the Street festival. Books and books-related events had become a major preoccupation. The Munk Centre in midtown Toronto became a regular venue to participate in such events. (Read the blog: Parallel Histories) It was to continue for a few years until recently when I began to consciously slow down my activities in view of my deteriorating kidneys. 

Marshall McLuhan’s centenary was celebrated globally in 2011, and in Toronto, his hometown, he was remembered at a panel discussion organized by the McLuhan Legacy Network. It was an important discussion.

McLuhan remains prescient about the future of the media. He’d predicted the Age of Internet long before it became a reality. He said, “The next medium, whatever it is – it may be the extension of consciousness – will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual’s encyclopedic function, and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind.”

My blog was being noticed and I began to get offers from publishers for book reviews. I’d prefer to write mostly about authors, book events and about books without doing reviews. Calypso Editions in the USA sent me a new translation of Leo Tolstoy’s ‘How much land does a man need’. It’s a simple, straightforward folklore of human greed. I blogged about Tagore and Translation in two parts. (Part 1, Part 2)

Che - getting ready for the
school concert

At work, I was doing all that needed to be done to give back to the ICCC – the organization that had made life possible in Canada for me and my family. I enjoyed the work, and what I loved more was the constant interaction with people who were deeply involved with the organization. 

Under Satish Thakkar's leadership, the organisation took off and successfully scaled peaks of glory never before attempted in the three-and-a-half decades of the organisation's history. 

Harjit Kalsi was another stalwart – an unassuming, soft-spoken, hands-on manager, who made the most menial tasks pleasurable. Together, Harjit and I created a short documentary on Hindi film songs with the railway motif for the ICCC’s year-end gala that had the Indian Railways as its theme.

At home, Che was in his final pre-teen years and was turning into a handsome young man. The next three years would be hard on him; years that’d change him forever.  I’ve often thought about these years and often wondered whether I did the right thing in getting us here.

Marshall McLuhan's centenary

Earlier this week, I attended a panel discussion on Reading & Publishing: Paper or Screen organised by McLuhan Legacy Network to discuss the changing format of the book and the future of reading, publishing and libraries.

The panel comprised “authors, publishers and aggregators” and included John Cruickshank, Publisher, Toronto Star; Susan Caron, Manager, Collection Development, Toronto Library; Jian Ghomeshi, host of Q Radio One, CBC; Nathan Maharaj, Merchandising Director, Kobo eReader; Alana Wilcox, Editorial Director, Coach House Press & Carolyn Wood, Executive Director, Association of Canadian Publishers.

The discussion while insightful, was also a “a game of bluff and bluster, words and whimsy,” with everyone generally agreeing that even if technology changes reading habits, the habit of reading won’t disappear altogether. Not surprising, considering it was a congregation of believers in the supremacy of reading.

A similar panel discussion at the 2010 Luminato on Fiction in the Age of E-Books (authors Katherine Govier and Paul Theroux, publisher Sarah MacLachlan, bookseller Joel Silver and journalist Scott Stossel) had reached the same sort of conclusion of being “torn between hope and nostalgia.”

McLuhan Legacy Network had organised a series of events between July 18 and 24, to celebrate the centenary of Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980). McLuhan was a Canadian.

McLuhan’s prophetic insights into the media and society have shaped our thinking over the last five decades. For instance, aphorisms such as the medium is the message, the global village, information overload, all advertising advertises advertising, the future of the book is the blurb, remain embedded in our consciousness, nearly five decades since they were postulated.

And his frighteningly prescient prediction about the Age of the Internet: 

“The next medium, whatever it is – it may be the extension of consciousness – will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual's encyclopaedic function, and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind.”

Image: http://www.gingkopress.com/index.html

Additional reading: http://marshallmcluhan.com/more/

Reading & Gaming

Anyone with a child who is a young adult (11-17 age groups) knows that reading is not a priority. Not for the parent and definitely not for the child. Reading is something that s/he does occasionally, and almost always on the computer.

Reading a book is such a rarity. Recently, when my son finished the Island trilogy by the Canadian author Gordon Korman it was a cause of a minor celebration for us. 

Looking at the reading habits of the younger generation I'm completely convinced that books may not survive for long. Of course, reading will last longer. Books won't. They don't need to.

Books were a technological innovation that emerged from Johann Gutenberg's printing press of 1439. As a technological innovation, books have outlasted almost all technological innovation of that era. 

Books changed lives, and were a precursor to mass popularity of the written word. In a sense, books democratized knowledge, and enabled common people to access ideas hitherto reserved only for the privileged sections of the society. 

That popularity eventually led to mass media of the 20th century. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man by Marshall McLuhan is a brilliant exposition on the printing press's enormous overall impact. It is the book that first spoke of the global village. 

The globalization process and the advancement of technology (at a pace that outstrips advancement in science) brought about more democratization of the media. 

The internet has provided access to information and knowledge from across the world and blogs have made it possible for common people to express their views inexpensively through blogs. 

Undoubtedly, we are in the middle of a revolution that will change the way we consume and produce media. 

And books will die. Unlamented, perhaps.

It is in this context that I read the report published by Toronto Star's Ideas section last Saturday (December 20, 2008) that a California-based gaming company -- Electronic Arts -- is developing Dante Alighieri's epic Italian poem The Divine Comedy as a video game for kids called Dante's Inferno. The report Abandon hope, all ye who game here makes for interesting reading. But more than anything else, it sort of reconfirms my belief that books will have to mutate into other (more accessible) variants to survive. 

Video games are perhaps the best mutation for books. Books as video games will make them accessible to kids. The purists will disagree...nobody really cares for them. 

We’ll revisit the subject soon.