Two pages for the Season of Lightness and Good Cheer!
APROPOS...
(Or the art of writing
Letters to the Editor)
"The report of my death
was highly exaggerated,"
said a probably apocryphal
letter to the editor by Mark
Twain. Unfortunately, access to
such correspondence from such
eminent sources is not easy
even in today's world of Google.
Among the great men of the
20th Century, Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi was one
political leader who did not
hesitate to write to newspapers
when he was not writing for
them or publishing them
himself.
A telling example of his audacious
prose based on the high
moral ground was his letter
dated October 25, 1894 to the
Times of Natal, which had carried
a contemptuously worded
editorial titled 'Rammysammy'.
Gandhi wrote: "You would
not allow the Indian or the native
the precious privilege (of
voting) under any circumstances,
because they have a
dark skin. You would look at
the exterior only. So long as the
skin is white it would not matter
to you whether it conceals
beneath it poison or nectar. To
you the lip-prayer of the Pharisee,
because he is one, is more
acceptable than the sincere repentance
of the publican, and
this, I presume, you would call
Christianity."
'Hardy perennials' would be
a perfect description of those
sterling men – and occasional
women – who have made it
their life's mission to write letters
beginning, "Dear Sir, Apropos
the article on the Anna
Hazare movement in your Op-
Ed page by XYZ."
The magazines are the place
to go if you want interesting
even controversial fare. Outlook
and Tehelka are Indian magazines
that seem to attract the
most entertaining debates in
the Letters column, and that
may be because their editors do
not mind publishing letters
critical of them and their magazines.
Madras Musings, the heritage
fortnightly, seems to fare rather
better than its national counterparts
in that it has a loyal
base of correspondents with
strong, often sound, views on
everything from the hygiene
hazards of the city to the heritage
value of all manner of relics
of a bygone era.
Here are some examples:
Fidelity to Madras
I refer to the reminder to
Union Finance Minister about
his promise to save the Bharat
Insurance Building (MM, August
16th). It should be child's
play for the FM to get the LIC
Chairman to preserve the building
because he is the LIC
Chairman's boss. There are,
however, other priorities.
The FM has to first tackle
the economy which has become
as moribund as the building.
Besides, he has other promises
to keep and files to go (shall we
say scams to investigate?) before
he sleeps. Plus, he has to
step gingerly because
Subramanian Swamy is snapping
at his heels. He certainly
has a lot on his plate.
A lurking danger is LIC quietly
borrowing a couple of bulldozers
from Metrorail and reducing
the building to rubble
overnight.
C.G. Prasad (A Madras Musings veteran
of well over a decade)
* * *
An old issue of the same
magazine reveals a rather sentimental
streak in its readers:
their concern for the vanishing
sparrow. Here are some edited
samples from the correspondence
the subject evoked.
The vanishing sparrows
When I was young there
were innumerable instances of
sparrows building nests in the
beams and in the fan covers of
our house. I remember rehabilitating
some young ones whenever
they fell and making nests
in shoeboxes for them.
Nowadays, I must admit,
they are not to be seen. But
when I went to Kothavalchavadi
recently, I was surprised to
see many of them competing
with humans and bovines alike.
Padmini Badri
* * *
Anna Institute of Management,
a State Government
sponsored management training
institute, functions in
Kanchi, a heritage building in
Greenways Road. In this building
we have lots of sparrows and
the chirping of the sparrows
eases the stresses of a working
day and creates a wonderful environment
for effective human
interaction so necessary in a
training programme.
Dr. T.A.
Sivasubramaniam
* * *
Does the younger generation
know what a sparrow is? Does
the older generation remember?
Driven by urban blight, this diminutive
creature has made its
exit – well, almost. But I disagree
with the claim by Madras
Naturalists' Society that these
birds can be seen in Mylapore.
However, I saw sparrows in
two other areas. At Beach Station,
opposite TIAM House,
about four or five years ago and
at Ellis' Road/Mount Road near
Anna Statue about two years
ago.
B. Gautham
* * *
Birds have always been a formidable
attraction to letters-to-the-
editor writers. The Times,
London, even came up with a
book of letters to the Editor collected
over a hundred years.
The sighting of the first cuckoo
and the first nightingale of
spring was a joy that English
men and women loved to share
with their fellow readers of The
Times or The Telegraph, though
the urge to get there first could
not be ruled out.
Septuagenarian Duncan
Rayner is one fierce competitor.
He told a newspaper reporter
that he was at his computer by
8.30 am most of the days, scanning
the paper for topics to
write about. "You have to be
quick to get your oar in," he
says. "You know that there are
other people making very similar
points."
One famous letters-to-theeditor
writer, Keith Flett, belongs
to the Beard Liberation
Front, "a campaigning organisation,
a vehicle for exposing
the smooth-faced absurdities of
the New Labour world." Flett
reckons on an average success
rate of just five per cent; and he
has had some 1,000 letters published.
Roland Tyrrell, Deputy Letters
Editor at The Independent,
who rations Keith to just four
outings a year, said, "The really
annoying thing about Keith
Flett is that he writes such a
good letter."
Robert Warner, a semi-retired
management consultant,
has been a constant pain in the
nect with his obsessive ways of
letter writing, but his wife,
Anne, took her revenge, when
she wrote to The Telegraph:
"Please stop publishing letters
from my husband: after three in
less than a fortnight he is insufferable
and has taken to reading
the letters page online at 2
am. Enough is enough – there
are lawns to mow, leaves to
sweep and logs to split."
The Telegraph of England recently
brought out the third
edition of a book of unpublished
letters to the editor. This is
what the editor of the newspaper,
Iain Hollingshead, said at
the time the first edition was
published: "Am I Alone in
Thinking...? proved to be a surprise
Christmas hit, selling over
70,000 copies and topping the
Independent Bookshops'
chart."
The third and latest version
was brought out very recently.
Here are some gems from the
three versions so far:
In praise of progress
SIR – My first thought on
seeing your headline, "Pupils to
be taught about sex at seven,"
was, "What, in the morning?"
When I was a child, the
school day began with prayer.
But you can't stop progress.
Peter Homer
* * *
Waking up terror experts
SIR "It's a wake-up call".
That's what politicians say after
every terrorist outrage. So who
are these security experts who
need to be woken up on a regular
basis? Are they all teenagers
who can't bear to get our of bed
before three in the afternoon?
Jim Dawes
* * *
Tanned Tony
SIR – I don't believe you
should judge a man by the
colour of his skin, but in the
case of Tony Blair I'll make an
exception.
Ralph Berry
* * *
Sporting figures
SIR – Whose idea was it to stage the World Cup during the cricket season?
Mary E Rudd
* * *
According to the editor of
The Telegraph, the only
certainty in this business is that
the correspondence will keep
pouring in. "Letters to the Editor"
column offers a coherent,
carefully edited space – a kind
of daily competition, if you will
– that exhibits the best of what
our readers are thinking. They
are seldom shy of sharing these
thoughts, writing from their offices,
from holiday – even, in
one instance, from the bath.
One correspondent suggested
that 'we run a separate letters
page for emails sent after pub
closing time.'
Great magazines like The
New Yorker and The Economist
invariably publish letters to the
editor of high quality, but they
are often on very serious issues
and rightly so. It is the newspapers
that can provide space for
the whimsical, the angry, the
downright playful varieties of
letters on subjects as varied as
international politics and rainwater
harvesting. Will our dailies
consider giving the reader a
chance to flex his creative
muscles, to coin an oxymoron?
(Courtesy: Matrix, journal of
the Sanmar Group)
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