The serious side of comic strips

Deccan Herald had been the popular newspaper in the Eighties for Bangalore’s significant English speaking middle class. Now of course, sadly, TOI reigns in the state. Of course some Tamilians and avid news analysts still favour to ‘The Hindu’. The reason I write about these newspapers is not about their news coverage or quality but the comic sections that provide relief from the depressing news on the main sheet.

DH ran (and continues even now) a ‘Blondie’ comic that is almost 1/4^th of a entire page on its Sunday edition, apart from the weekly strips. Like all Indian kids curious about the US, I got to know about a typical American family through ‘Blondie’. The fact that, like any average middle class family in Bangalore, we did not own a car or any have spacious lawn in front of our tiny houses did not deter me in relating to the Dagwood family. Every Sunday, I would read about Dagwood going to work in a car pool, playing golf with Herb or mowing the lawns while Blondie maintained the house and worked as professional caterer. My dream was to have a couch like the one Dagwood slept on.

As we grew up the newspaper price wars started in our state. Our family like many others switched over to TOI. The leisure section in Bangalore Times became my everyday past time. One advantage of TOI is that they have a daily comics section covering many famous comics – Peanuts, Garfield, Calvin and of course Archies. But the picture quality and comic space has shrunk to an incredulous size. Sometimes I read the same comic strip reprinted on consecutive days. Obviously TOI thinks either comics are only for kids who look at the pictures or no one gets past the BT supplements models on its cover page. Though I love the collection, especially the indefatigable Calvin, I hate their utter disregard to the size of the strips. I’ll challenge anyone to a bucketful of icecream if they can read the Denis comic strip without squinting their eyes. I don’t mind reading only one comic on a Sunday that would extend to half a page.

Sometimes I feel, we need an Indian newspaper that dedicates an entire sheet towards cartoons. After all, everyone loves a laugh right? My internet search on the war of news publishers with comic space led me to Wikipedia. This is what Wiki says –

“Main article: Sunday strip

Sunday newspapers traditionally included a special color section. Early Sunday strips, such as Thimble Theatre and Little Orphan Annie, filled an entire newspaper page, a format known to collectors as full page. Later strips, such as The Phantom and Terry and the Pirates, were usually only half that size, with two strips to a page in full-size newspapers, such as the New Orleans Times Picayune, or with one strip on a tabloid page, as in the Chicago Daily News. When Sunday strips began to appear in more than one format, it became necessary for the cartoonist to allow for rearranged, cropped or dropped panels. During World War II, because of paper shortages, the size of Sunday strips began to shrink. After the war, strips continued to get smaller and smaller, to save the expense of printing so many color pages. The last full-page comic strip was the Prince Valiant strip for 11 April 1971. Today, most Sunday strips are smaller than the daily strips of the 1930s.“

I guess in the coming days, the section might shrink further or worse, will be published only in the internet edition. Its time the money making publishing firms shrunk some ad space for our beloved cartoons, isn’t it?

Slow and steady

(courtesy www.flickr.com)

I'm back after a long break. When I started this blog, my friends and family had warned me that blog creation is done in a jiffy. Maintaining the blog and to keep it interesting depends the ideas and frequency of the posts. The higher the frequency factor and the blog will survive. Does this mean I should write one post everyday? Or ten posts a day? What is the average blogging speed? Let’s leave the news feeds for they are churned out every hour.
With idle time on hand and some online web searches later, I came to know that there are blogs like that of Chris Brogan who types out 3 - 4 posts per day, apart from the twitter updates. In the blog that I frequent regularly, India Uncut, Amit Verma churns out 2-3 posts every day. I’ve also heard of people who post more than ten posts a day! Consequently their blog readership is also very high. Well, they are professional bloggers. While they write to improve readership, I write to improve my writing... and also share some thoughts.
Another blogger, Will, in his blog series on ’11 things to consider before you start blogging’ introduces the term ‘publishing frequency’. At the end of the analysis, this is what he says –
“Overall deciding what publishing frequency to post articles on your blog is totally up to you and no one else. Although you can look at competition and your chosen subject for inspiration or ideas it comes down to the amount of time you have spare and how much of that time you are willing to dedicate to writing articles each day.”
His publishing frequency is 5 posts per week. Another blogger who shares similar thoughts is Keith Burtis, who aims at one post per day.
I maintain three blogs and churn out three different posts every week. My aim for this blog is 2-3 posts a week, which is slightly lower than average; but I don’t mind because, as Will says, ‘it’s totally up to me’

Satyam or Mityam

The entire business world was agog yesterday about Satyam's deals fiasco. My andhra colleague, a Reddy, had once told me that any Telugu family's ideal groom would be a 'Satyam' employee working in US. Well, needless to say, those families will be a worried lot. Looking back at what happened, if anyone can pull off such a coup, its Premji, but I guess he has better business sense than the stalwarts in Satyam Board of Directors. I wonder if the board had a momentary memory lapse while approving such deals. Read on.

NRI's work is God's work

In the days of yore, it was the Maharajas who patronised temple building during the height of their powers. Mahabalipuram, Hampi’s Virupaksha, Ashoka’s Sarnath pillar are a few examples. Now that we have a democracy, I thought that the mantle is taken over by our politicians. After all, ‘Government’s work is God’s work’, declares Vidhana Soudha. But I guess it’s the NRIs who are the neo-Kings. With financial support from Non-Resident Indians, the state government plans to renovate 500 temples in Coastal Karnataka and Udupi. A welcome move considering that even now, in many small villages, economies revolve around the temples. Read on.

Checkmate on terror

Every Indian has been deeply affected by terrorist's attack on Mumbai. I couldn't beleive my eyes when I saw the Taj burning; the same Taj I had visited a few months back. Then the gateway area had a bazaar like atmosphere and now it was bizarre. So how do you hit back without a war that'll wipe away south asia with nuclear weapons? I read this enlightening article by an IIMB professor to how to hit back its economy. It makes sense. After all if the economy tanks, how will ISI raise its funds for the terror outfits?

A moment of hesitation

I stood in front of Kanti Sweets, a place that we frequent for its excellent badam (almond) milkshake. Cajoling my two-year old to have a glass of badam milk takes a lot of patience(unless your two-year old is goody-goody and laps up all the milk like they show on some TV ads). That was when I saw her. Sitting in front of the shop, she looked old, wrinkled and nondescript. She was just one of the millions of beggars we see in the city and choose to ignore. While my kid drank a few sips and I couldn't help looking at her. She was definitely hungry and had I had offered her a milkshake, she'd have finished it in a gulp. Many thoughts rushed past me. There are so beggars in the city and how many could one help? Also this old lady might be controlled by some ringleader who takes a percentage of her earnings.

Just then, interuppting my train of thoughts, a guy, maybe in his thirties, rushed out of the shop with a plate of hot parantha and asked her if she wanted it. The old lady just gobbled the whole steaming parantha while he watched on. Once she finished, he handed the plate back to the server, came out of the shop and asked her if she needed help in walking across the street, as he was headed that way. He led her out of the place gently like he would to his own family.

I could have done the same thing - its just that I hesitated. Many of us have this dilemma. Should we help the beggars or encourage begging? Many a times I've felt giving money to a lady, holding an infant, but checked my sympathy thinking that this might be a 'borrowed' baby to increase her earnings given from the soft-hearted middle class. So what is the right thing to do? I would say act what you feel at that moment, like this man who bought the old lady a dinner. Give food, atleast that wont go the ones who control the racket.

Road rage

I still have the license number of his car on my mobile! Last week, there was a political rally in our city that created a traffic chaos in many areas, especially north Bangalore. Traffic came to a standstill thanks to our local politician who showed his power by bringing in 4000 busloads of rural families in our tiny conjested city roads for his political speech at Palace grounds. The result, traffic jam right from Cunningham road until the Airport. Any vehicle headed north would have been stuck for atleast 5-6 hours on the road before reaching home. Ours was also the one of the unfortunate ones.

But thats not the point. On such a day where everyone from the commuters to the traffic police were on their edge, I want to write about the only road rage instance I met. It was not from the usual auto-driver, but from a well-to-do educated and beefy bugger. He not only shouted at our chaffeur;when I raised my voice, he asked me to shut up and raised his car window. As his car went ahead, I saw 'Coorg wildlife security' sticker on it. His license number is KA04 MF 3915. I wonder if the Coorg animals are as wild as this dude.