‘The Room on the Roof’, by Ruskin Bond, is the celebrated writer’s first venture into literature. The heart-warming story of Rusty, a seventeen-year-old orphaned Anglo-Indian boy, looking for a ‘home’ in the charming hills of Dehradun has lived on through decades.
Here is an excerpt from the book on Rusty’s search for a corner he can call his own.
Rusty had never slept well in his guardian’s house, because he had never been tired enough; also his imagination would disturb him. And, since running away, he had slept badly, because he had been cold and hungry. But in Somi’s house he felt safe and a little happy, and slept; he slept the remainder of the day and through the night.
In the morning Somi tipped Rusty out of bed and dragged him to the water tank. Rusty watched Somi strip and stand under the jet of tap water, and shuddered at the prospect of having to the same.
Before removing his shirt, Rusty looked around in embarrassment; no one paid much attention to him, though one of the ayahs, the girl with the bangles, gave him a sly smile; he looked away from the women, threw his shirt on a bush and advanced cautiously to the bathing place.
Somi pulled him under the tap. The water was icy-cold and Rusty gasped with the shock. As soon as he was wet, he sprang off the platform, much to the amusement of Somi and the ayahs.
There was no towel with which to dry himself; he stood on the grass, shivering with cold, wondering whether he should dash back to the house or shiver in the open until the sun dried him. But the girl with the bangles was beside him holding a towel; her eyes were full of mockery, but her smile was friendly.
At the midday meal, which consisted of curry and curd and chapattis, Rusty met Somi’s mother, and liked her.
She was a woman of about thirty-five; she had a few grey hairs at the temples, and her skin—unlike Somi’s—was rough and dry. She dressed simply, in a plain white sari. Her life had been difficult. After the partition of the country, when hate made religion its own, Somi’s family had to leave their home in the Punjab and trek southwards; they had walked hundreds of miles and the mother had carried Somi, who was then six, on her back. Life in India had to be started again, right from the beginning, for they had lost most of their property: the father found work in Delhi, the sisters were married off, and Somi and his mother settled down in Dehra, where the boy attended school.
The mother said: ‘Mister Rusty, you must give Somi a few lessons in spelling and arithmetic. Always, he comes last in class.’
‘Oh, that’s good!’ exclaimed Somi. ‘We’ll have fun, Rusty!’ Then he thumped the table. ‘I have an idea! I know, I think I have a job for you! Remember Kishen, the boy we passed yesterday? Well, his father wants someone to give him private lessons in English.’
‘Teach Kishen?’
‘Yes, it will be easy. I’ll go and see Mr Kapoor and tell him I’ve found a professor of English or something like that, and then you can come and see him. Brother, it is a first-class idea, you are going to be a teacher!’
Rusty felt very dubious about the proposal; he was not sure he could teach English or anything else to the wilful son of a rich man; but he was not in a position to pick and choose. Somi mounted his bicycle and rode off to see Mr Kapoor to secure for Rusty the post of Professor of English. When he returned he seemed pleased with himself, and Rusty’s heart sank with the knowledge that he had got a job.
‘You are to come and see him this evening,’ announced Somi, ‘he will tell you all about it. They want a teacher for Kishen, especially if they don’t have to pay.’ ‘What kind of a job without pay?’ complained Rusty.
‘No pay,’ said Somi, ‘but everything else. Food—and no cooking is better than Punjabi cooking; water—’
‘I should hope so,’ said Rusty.
‘And a room, sir!’ ‘Oh, even a room,’ said Rusty ungratefully, ‘that will be nice.’
‘Anyway,’ said Somi, ‘come and see him, you don’t have to accept.’.
Find out more about Rusty and his delightful adventures today!
Tag: book nibbles
Love Will Find A Way — Prologue
Anurag Garg is the bestselling author of A Half-Baked Love Story and Love Not for Sale.
Here is an excerpt from his latest novel Love Will Find A Way.
10 July 2016
New Delhi Railway Station
As soon as the delayed train reached the platform, passengers rushed to board. We quickened our pace as clouds began to gather in the sky. Looking up, I saw insidious grey encroaching on the blue expanse. The city was ready to welcome its first rain.
As the first few drops fell, we entered the carriage along with the other disgruntled passengers. When we found our berth, Gitanjali grabbed the window seat, as always, and asked me to buy a bottle of water from one of the stalls in the platform after placing our luggage in the overhead bin. I gave her an exasperated look. She looked outside as raindrops began to trickle down the window pane. She was wearing a pair of skinny black jeans and a turquoise T-shirt. Her warm chestnut hair rested on her neck and her long eyelashes swept alluringly against her rouged cheeks, from time to time.
‘Get me a packet of chips, too.’ She thoroughly enjoyed it when I catered to her every need, especially when we were on vacation. Three years into our relationship and we still bickered like teenagers! I handed her the requested goods while she plugged in her headphones.
I rummaged through my bag to find my neck pillow and settled down with my Saadat Hasan Manto book as the train pulled out of the station.
There was a couple with two children in the seats next to us. We exchanged smiles as a man selling tea came our way. They attempted to engage me in small talk even though I tried to keep to myself and buried my head in my book. Gitanjali, however, adores making conversation. With her legs folded under her and her hands gesturing wildly, her face glows when she narrates one of her tales. She began talking to the couple and playing with the kids. It made me immeasurably happy seeing her bright eyes and animated smile.
The TTE came to check our tickets.
‘They’re on your phone,’ I said to her, as she continued playing with the little boy.
‘No, they’re not with me, Anurag,’ she said, her attention focused on playfully tickling the boy, oblivious to the TTE who was breathing down our necks. She turned to me when the little boy suddenly started crying.
‘Were you asking for the tickets?’ she asked as she showed the TTE the IRCTC message on her phone. I heaved a sigh and said, ‘Thank you, madam!’ Gitanjali just smiled and began consoling the wailing kid. She had this uncanny ability to comfort those around her.
Just as the train left the Anand Vihar station, I went to the toilet to change into comfortable clothes for the long journey ahead since mine were slightly wet from the rain.
On returning to our compartment, I saw a beautiful middle-aged woman sitting there, dressed in a floral knee-length kurta and smart trousers. I presumed she had boarded at Anand Vihar. The woman wore spectacles and had green eyes, just like Gitanjali. As she smiled at me, I was struck by an eerie feeling, as though I somehow knew her.
Most of the passengers were going to their hometowns for the summer vacations, whereas some of them, like us, were going to Nainital on holiday. We had to get off the train at Haldwani, which was the closest town to Nainital, from where we had to take a taxi or bus to reach the hill station. I gazed at the scenic vistas as the train trundled through the countryside.
In Amroha, we saw farmers harvesting crops and cows grazing in the paddy fields. Little huts made of bamboo and mud dotted the scenes that rushed by. Gitanjali nudged me as I wrote down the plot points for my next book.
‘Have you decided on the theme of the story?’ she inquired loudly.
‘Yes, I’ve been thinking about something . . . but I’m not sure. I want my character’s motives and emotions to be driven by some sort of psychological disorder.’ My words drew the attention of the beautiful woman and she looked up curiously from her book.
Forever Is A Lie: An Excerpt
Novoneel Chakraborty is the bestselling author of nine romance thrillers and he is back with another beguiling dark romance thriller. The first of a two-part series, Forever Is a Lie is about an eighteen year old girl who falls in love with a man, almost double her age. But what she doesn’t know is that whoever the man loves, dies.
Here is an excerpt from the book.
This was her profile information on Facebook. Ditto on Tinder, a dating app. With moist eyes, she checked the about me section on the app, which she had just filled up:
I’m here to hook up for a night. Anyone who wants anything that goes beyond a night, please swipe left.
Prisha forced herself not to think as she started browsing through men’s profiles on the app. Tinder was recommended to her by Zinnia, her roommate. Two years her senior in college, Zinnia was from the same neighbourhood as Prisha in Faridabad. She had shifted to Bengaluru to pursue media management from Cross University.
Prisha had followed in her footsteps and shifted to Bengaluru a month ago and had taken admission at the same university. She had enrolled herself as a BA student, with a major in mass communication. Zinnia and Prisha stayed together in a rented apartment on BTM Layout.
It was Zinnia who had first described Tinder as a saviour of singles in the city. But Prisha hadn’t made an account on the dating site because she was single, but because she had been feeling emotionally violated for a few months now.
Anyone remotely good-looking and Prisha would swipe right. In fact, looks didn’t matter at all for what she had in mind. She had heard about Tinder earlier from a number of friends but had never imagined using it one day. Why would she? She had been in a committed relationship since she had turned thirteen—until two months ago when she had stepped into her penultimate teenage year. In all these years there had been only one boy she was doggedly, single-mindedly and with utmost sincerity committed to.
Utkarsh Arora had wooed her for an entire summer vacation before she had finally said yes. She was in Class VII and he was in Class X. (Love, then, was an alien feeling. It slowly turned real as they gave it time). And just when Prisha had started believing that there could be no one better than Utkarsh, he let her down.
She had invited him to a family function. It was a dream to see her boyfriend enjoy with her family and cousins; everyone had approved of him. Three weeks later, she had noticed that Utkarsh’s Facebook relationship status had changed from: in a relationship with Prisha Srivastav to in a relationship with Shelly Srivastav. Shelly was her cousin and two years older than her. Prisha demanded an explanation but all Utkarsh said was that he was now in love with Shelly. Now? Is love a prisoner of time? Not only did Utkarsh not give her any plausible explanation, but he repeatedly dodged her calls and then blocked her on social media and on his phone. When she turned to Shelly for an answer, she simply said, ‘He loves me, not you.’
At eighteen, when one’s world collapses, it also brings down with it the beliefs one has grown up on. You stop trusting in truths altogether. You start believing that a truth is nothing but an illusion. Some call it the loss of innocence. It is then that people start giving in to the collective lies that makes everyone sorted adults. Prisha’s attempt at creating a Tinder profile was proof enough that she had given in to it as well.
Love, Prisha concluded within a month of her break-up, was a fallacy. Lust was real; the body was real. And henceforth, she would get real too. Even if it meant living a life she didn’t believe in.
Seven hours after she had made her Tinder profile, there were thirteen matches. When Zinnia came back from college, Prisha gave the phone to her.
‘I think this dude looks cute. What do you think?’ Zinnia said, looking at the fifth match. Prisha couldn’t care less. Zinnia chatted with the guy on Prisha’s behalf and in no time fixed a date later in the night at Harry’s in Koramangala. Zinnia knew Prisha’s story, but she wasn’t the one who had given her the idea of a one-night stand. It was something Prisha had inquired herself when Zinnia kept ranting about some guy who went by the name the ‘Mean Monster’ in the Bangalore party circuit. Mean because he was infamous for his edging technique—a method by which orgasm could be delayed, pushing the body to feel pleasure like never before. And monster because what he carried between his legs was two inches more than that of an average Indian’s. Zinnia was more than excited when she was finally able to trace the elusive guy and pin him down for a date, coincidentally on the same night that Prisha was supposed to meet her Tinder date.
‘You’ll have to come with me, Zin,’ Prisha said as soon as Zinnia had fixed the place for her to meet the Tinder guy.
‘Of course! But I too have a date, sweets,’ she said. Prisha noticed that Zinnia was blushing slightly, which was very unlike her.
‘What?’ Prisha asked, surprised.
‘Finally I’m going to meet him tonight.’
‘Who?’
‘The Mean Monster.’
When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Gets Going: An Excerpt from ‘Millionaire Housewives’
Twelve stories of ordinary women who achieved extraordinary things out of sheer will and determination come together in Rinku Paul and Puja Singhal’s ‘Millionaire Housewives’, to inspire readers to achieve anything one wants to.
One such story is that of the well-known make-up artist Ambika Pillai. There is a monumental struggle that went behind the glitter and glamour of her life that we see today. Displaying unbridled courage when the going got tough, the story of Pillai is one to stay with us forever.
Here is an excerpt of her story from the book, ‘Millionaire Housewives’:
At the tender age of seventeen, my life took a decisive turn when a prospective groom came to see me. I didn’t even know his name. The one thing about him that impressed me though was his impeccable English. He had an MBA degree, was a gold medallist no less, and I gave up my world without any reservations to follow him to his. The excitement didn’t last long though. Despite his seemingly bright prospects, the reality check arrived as soon as I moved in with him to a tiny single-room apartment in Calcutta, a far cry from my sprawling home in Kerala. I was expected to wear a saree, be up at 5 a.m., cook, clean—things that I had never done before. I didn’t protest, refusing to let any of this affect me since I wanted to make my marriage work. I began to take many other things in my stride; being made to feel that I was not good enough on account of my lack of education was only one of them. I would have lived with all of this, but ours really wasn’t a marriage at all.
Not once in five years did we have a physical relationship. It was hard to explain this to my parents, who were convinced that my inability to bear a child meant there was something medically wrong with me. Trips to doctors, medical tests and even surgeries were my lot as I found it very hard to tell my parents the real issue with my marriage. I had to literally beg my husband to have a child and, thankfully, my daughter, Kavitha, was born after five years of marriage. If I had thought that a child would improve matters, I was living in a fool’s paradise as things started going from bad to worse.
Finally, with a two-year-old child in tow, I mustered up the courage to walk out of my seven-year-old marriage. I went back to my parents’ place. In retrospect, those seven years were one of the scariest times of my life. Kids should not get married as young as I did; at that age, you don’t even know your own mind, forget the other person’s. From wanting to be a happy housewife to coming back to my parental home in the throes of depression, I had come a long way. I had spent the last seven years of my life in a loveless relationship and had absolutely nothing to fall back on. If there was one thing I was grateful for, it was Kavitha. In fact, till this day, if anyone asks me if I regret my marriage, my answer is a vehement no, only on account of my daughter.
I just had no idea what I would do next. In my seven years of marriage, I hadn’t acquired any skills that could stand me in good stead. While my parents were supportive, my dad’s suggestion of letting him ‘look after’ my child and me financially didn’t go down well with me. With my other sisters married by then, I remember asking my father if I could help him with his cashew business—wanting to become the son he had never had. His answer, however, was a resounding ‘no’ as he felt it wasn’t a woman’s job. He couldn’t picture his daughter socializing with his many customers—a part and parcel of his cashew export business.
Never in my life had I felt like such a total loser. I wanted to stand on my own feet, but in the absence of any skills, I saw all doors closing in on me. In my desperation, I even came up with naive options like selling T-shirts on the beaches of Goa, where my lack of education would not be a deterrent. It was on one such day, when I was feeling totally dejected, that I saw an advertisement by Shahnaz Hussain in the local newspaper, inviting students for a hairstyling course in New Delhi. I made up my mind to join it. More than anything else, my decision was based on the fact that being a beautician didn’t require me to be a graduate. My father, of course, was devastated by the idea of me stepping out of the home turf. My mom tried to buy peace by explaining to my dad that at least I was choosing a ‘woman-oriented’ career and that I would be back home after finishing my course.
I landed in Delhi, a totally unknown city, with my daughter in my arms, utterly terrified of what the future held. I had never lived all by myself before or taken any independent decisions. Yet, here I was, fending for myself, looking for accommodations to rent. The problem was further compounded by the fact that I didn’t speak any Hindi. Irrespective of the many problems staring me in my face, I knew that there was no turning back now. I had to do this—more for my daughter than anyone else. While Delhi now feels like home, in those days I was a rank outsider. I remember people calling me ‘kali kaluti (dark complexioned)’. Of course, the saving grace was that since I didn’t know the language, I couldn’t quite understand what it meant. I somehow held on, and managed to finish two beauty courses.
Upon finishing my courses, although my parents were keen that I return home, I took up a job at a small two-seater parlour, which paid me Rs 2000 per month. I paid Rs 1000 as house rent and tried to stretch the balance to take care of my child. Money was something I never had to worry about in the past and these were trying times to say the least. While my father had paid for my courses, I was now determined to seek minimal financial help from him. I remember trying to save money from the measly Rs 1000 I had left after paying rent in order to buy a moped bike that would make commuting easier. Today, if one of my staff members tells me that they want to leave because they have a better offer, I never hold them back for I have witnessed the struggle for money first-hand.
The one bright spot of my life throughout this period remained my daughter, who was three years old by then and had just about started school. I remember telling Kavi stories of my own childhood—how I visited Disneyland when I was thirteen years old and how I would ensure that she did the same, although I had no clue how I would fulfil this promise.
Grab your copy of ‘Millionaire Housewives’ now!
Toddy Pancakes: A Gem from the Suriani Kitchen
The state of Kerala serves as a pandora’s box for culinary and gastronomically exquisite dishes. Since time immemorial, the spices of Kerala have drawn seafarers and traders to this state and the tradition has remained unchanged till date.
Drawing on this rich culinary heritage, Lathika George’s The Suriani Kitchen brings us unique recipes straight from the cookbooks of Syrian Christians.
Here’s a delicious sneak-peek into the book.
Toddy Pancakes
Kallappams
As the name implies, these appams get their name from kallu, the toddy that is traditionally used to prepare the batter. Yeast is substituted here, with good results. Kallappams are cooked on a griddle like thick pancakes. Serve these pancakes hot or cold with curries and stews.
Ingredients
Grind the soaked rice with the 2 cups of water in a blender or food processor until it becomes a smooth batter. Add the coconut and cooked rice, and process for 2 more minutes.
Pour the batter into a deep bowl and add the sugar, salt, and yeast mixture. Set aside to rise in a warm place for an hour or longer. When ready, the mixture should be like a frothy cake batter.
Pour 3⁄4 cup of batter on a hot, lightly greased griddle, and cook the thick pancakes over medium heat for 1 minute on each side. Repeat until all the batter has been used, keeping the cooked pancakes warm.
Does your kitchen smell like heaven yet?
India Transformed — An Excerpt
Rakesh Mohan is the former deputy governor of the RBI. He has also served as the executive director of the IMF and secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, and Ministry of Finance. He is currently a Distinguished Fellow with Brookings India.
India underwent a major economic reform in the form of liberalization in 1991. In India Transformed, India’s top business leaders and economists come together and provide a balanced picture of the consequences of the economic reforms, initiated in 1991. They ask themselves some imperative questions: What were the reforms? What were they intended for? How have they affected the overall functioning of the economy?
Here is an exclusive excerpt from the foreword of the book, written by Strobe Talbott, the former Deputy Secretary of United States of America.
This timely, authoritative and policy-relevant volume sheds light on India’s dramatic changes over the past quarter century. That transformation has not only been a boon to the people of India, it has also contributed to the progress of the human enterprise as a whole. The world’s largest democracy is a major player on the world stage. It is certainly viewed and valued that way by my own country, the United States of America.
The economic and commercial dimension of India’s evolution is, of course, crucial. Hence, the focus of submissions in the pages that follow is political economy, financial development, trade and globalization, technology and innovation, agricultural and industrial development, and the interaction between the private and public sectors. The contributors include some of the original designers and implementers of the reform process, along with the prominent business leaders who have been the most successful builders of the economy.
There is also, thanks to the inclusion of wisdom from Shivshankar Menon, Shyam Saran and Sanjaya Baru, due attention paid to India’s foreign and security policy.
Over the course of the last half-century, I have had numerous opportunities to watch India’s evolution, first from the vantage point of a student of international relations and then for two decades as a journalist. During my eight years in government during the 1990s, I also had a chance to participate in the effort by the Indian and the US governments to put the bilateral relationship on a sounder—indeed, a transformed—footing than had been the case in the first four decades after Indian Independence. Dennis Kux captured the perception on both sides of that star-crossed backstory in the subtitle of his 1992 book, India and the United States: Estranged Democracies.
What stymied a robust bond between these two countries? After all, both had wrested their independence from British rule while adopting and adapting many of the features of British constitutional governance (minus, of course, the monarchy).
The key factor, I’ve always believed, was the Cold War.
It was approximately at the midpoint of that global schism that I first visited India forty-two years ago. I owe that enriching and informative experience to a glitch in my career as a Sovietologist.
In those days, I was a reporter for Time magazine concentrating on East–West relations and was assigned to the State Department beat. This often meant whirling around the world, coping with what seemed like a permanent case of jetlag, trying to keep up with the then secretary of state Henry Kissinger.
In October 1974, Kissinger embarked on a seven-nation diplomatic tour starting with Moscow. The Kremlin was eager to welcome the secretary of state as the personification of continuity in the US policy of détente, in the wake of Richard Nixon’s resignation and Gerald Ford’s ascension to the presidency. The Soviets, however, were not about to extend their hospitality to me. I was persona non grata because of my role in translating and editing Nikita Khrushchev’s memoirs. The material for the two volumes was surreptitiously recorded and spirited out of the country while he was under virtual house arrest, since his ouster from the leadership ten years before. The second volume, published earlier in 1974, particularly irked Foreign Minister Anatoly Gromyko, who sent a message to Kissinger’s plane over the Atlantic, denying me a visa.
After I was unceremoniously dropped off in Copenhagen during a fuelling stop, I hopscotched to New Delhi, which would be Kissinger’s second stop after Moscow.
On the personal front, my several days of free time were immensely gratifying. I made friendships that lasted for decades. I also came to know Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan (whose desk officer at the State Department was none other than Dennis Kux). Moynihan’s wife, Elizabeth, took me under her wing and drove me out to—where else?—the Taj Mahal, where she was already deeply into studying the Mughal gardens.
Understanding Tagore’s Nationalism, An Interpretation by Ram Guha — An Excerpt
Rabindranath Tagore was born in 1861. He was the fourteenth child of Debendranath Tagore, head of the Brahmo Samaj. Their family house at Jorasanko was a hive of cultural and intellectual activity and Tagore started writing at an early age. He was a prolific writer; his works include poems, novels, plays, short stories, essays and songs. Late in his life Tagore also took up painting, exhibiting in Moscow, Berlin, Paris, London and New York. He died in 1941.
Born in Dehradun in 1958, and educated in Delhi and Calcutta, Ramachandra Guha pursued an academic career for ten years before becoming a full-time writer. He was named one of the hundred most influential intellectuals in the world by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines.
Here’s an excerpt from the introduction of Tagore’s Nationalism written by Ram Guha.
‘Why Tagore?’ asked a brilliant young mathematician of me recently. He was referring to a newspaper column where I had spoken of Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi,
Jawaharlal Nehru and B.R. Ambedkar as the ‘four founders’ of modern India. ‘I can see why you singled out the other three,’ said the mathematician. ‘Gandhi led the freedom movement, Nehru nurtured the infant Indian state, Ambedkar helped write its Constitution and gave dignity to the oppressed.
But why Tagore?’ My questioner was no ordinary Indian. He comes from a family of distinguished scholars and social reformers. Like his father and grandfather before him, he had been educated at a great Western university but came back to work in India. Like them, he is well read and widely travelled, and yet deeply attached to his homeland. He fluently speaks three Indian languages. If an Indian of his sensibility had to be convinced of Tagore’s greatness (or relevance), what then of all the others?
Tagore’s reputation, within India and outside it, has suffered from his being made a parochial possession of one province, Bengal. It was in Bengali that he wrote his poems, novels, plays and songs, works that are widely read and regularly performed seven decades after his death. The poet Subhas Mukhopadhyay recalls ‘a time when the elite of Bengal fought among themselves to monopolise Tagore. They tried to seal off Tagore, cordoning him away from the [sic] hoipolloi.’ Then he adds: ‘There was another trend, serving the same purpose, but in a different way. In the name of ideology and as the sole representative of the masses, some tried to protect the proletariat from the bourgeois poet’s harmful influence!
The Bengali communists have since taken back their hostility to Tagore—now, they quote his verses and sing his lyrics with as much gusto as their (bourgeois) compatriots.
But he remains the property of his native heath alone. This geographical diminution of the man and his reputation has been commented upon by that other great world traveller and world citizen of Bengali extraction, the sitar player Ravi Shankar. In his autobiography, the musician writes that ‘being Bengali, of course, makes it natural for me to feel so moved by Tagore; but I do feel that if he had been born in the West he would now be [as] revered as Shakespeare and Goethe . . .
He is not as popular or well-known worldwide as he should be. The Vishwa Bharati are guarding everything he did too jealously, and not doing enough to let the entire world know of his greatness.’
Ravi Shankar compared Tagore to the German genius Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 1832); so, before him, had the critic Buddhadeva Bose. Both men, remarked Bose, ‘participate[d] in almost everything’.Certainly, no one since Goethe worked in so many different fields and did original things in so many of them. Tagore was a poet, a novelist, a playwright, a lyricist, a composer and an artist. He had good days and bad, but at his best he was outstanding in each of these fields.
Tagore’s poems and stories are mostly set in Bengal. However, in his non-fiction, that is to say in his letters, essays, talks and polemics, he wrote extensively on the relations between the different cultures and countries of the world. Tagore, notes Humayun Kabir, ‘was the first great Indian in recent times who went out on a cultural mission for restoring contacts and establishing friendships with peoples of other countries without any immediate or specific educational, economic, political or religious aim. It is also remarkable that his cultural journeys were not confined to the western world’. He visited Europe and North America, but also Japan, China, Iran, Latin America and Indo-China.
Read the complete introduction by Ramachandra Guha in the new edition of Rabindranath Tagore’s Nationalism. Get your copy here.
When the Journey Began: ‘India at 70’ — An Excerpt
In 2017, India’s spacecraft Mangalyaan is orbiting Mars, satellites are regularly sent into space, the economy is growing rapidly and India’s diverse art and culture is appreciated globally. And, most importantly, India is the largest democracy in the world.
The story of India as an independent nation began seventy years ago, in 1947, when the country gained independence after almost 200 years of British rule. For the first time, India became a united political entity, a nation with clearly defined boundaries. What type of country would the new India be? Would it remain united and strong?
At this time, the territory known as India consisted of eleven British provinces and some additional areas directly under British rule as well as 565 Indian states (also called princely states) where the British had overall control. The Muslim League, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, wanted a separate state of Pakistan, and finally it was decided that this demand would be granted. On 14 and 15 August 1947, two new nations were created, but the boundary lines between them were known only on 17 August. Pakistan was in two parts; West Pakistan was formed in the western half of Punjab while East Pakistan was created from the province of Bengal. As the lines for dividing the area were drawn on a map, districts, canals and even villages were divided.
This partition of one country into two created many problems. In the west, 10 million migrated across the new borders, and as anger arose between Muslims on one side and Hindus and Sikhs on the other, about 1 million were killed. There were other issues too, as the entire administration and all its possessions—including tables, chairs, books, musical instruments, cars, pencils and pens as well as the army, police, railways, postal services, money and other items—had to be divided.
The process of integrating the different states to form one India began before Independence. While some of the states were in the region of Pakistan, 554 states were in Indian territory. These states had different kinds of rulers. Some controlled huge areas and had vast quantities of wealth, land, buildings, money, gold, jewels, cars and elephants; others had small territories of just a few square kilometres. There were actually 425 small states. By 31 July, two types of agreements had been worked out for the Indian states to sign, by which they agreed to join India and give up some of their powers. At the time of Independence, the Constitution of India was being prepared. A constitution consists of the rules and ideas according to which a nation is governed. The Constituent Assembly, a group of people who would discuss and write India’s constitution, first met on 9 December 1946. The Constitution was ready by the end of 1949, after which India became a republic in 1950. Two years later, the first elections were held and India’s Parliament began to function. Thus, though India’s complex history dates back to the Stone Age, the year 1947 brought in great change.
This is an excerpt from the introductory chapter of Roshen Dalal’s ‘India at 70’. Get your copy here today!
Give People Permission to Fail
When Felicia Ramsey, a marketing manager at SAS, started her career in media and advertising, she said that the only way anyone could measure the potential effectiveness of a campaign was to conduct a focus group, especially since it was so hard to assess the impact of a print or TV campaign. Making adjustments on the fly became difficult; you had to wait until the completion of the campaign to see the results.
With digital advertising, that’s all changed. “We don’t waste our time on anything we can’t measure our ROI anymore,” Ramsey explained. “That allows us to do more of things that work while doing less of things that don’t work.” With digital tools, we as marketers can also experiment and try new things without making the kinds of investments we once needed to. “We have built a culture that encourages and rewards us for taking risks and trying something different,” Ramsey said. “I’ve worked in other places where doing that might be held against you. Here you can be creative and comfortable about experimenting.”
A key lesson we’ve learned is to give marketers the freedom to test and learn so they can make intelligent decisions that will drive change. Since we began applying marketing optimization techniques, our conversion rates on outbound marketing campaigns have tripled, while associated communication costs are dropping. There has been a reduction in list size of 14 percent, a reduction in e-mail opt-outs of 20 percent, and an increase in click-through rates of 25 percent— all of which translates into higher-quality leads, reduced costs, and an improved customer or prospect experience. Achieving that kind of optimization has a direct impact on results, and it indirectly increases marketers’ confidence level. There is far less guesswork and much more time and energy invested in strategies to connect with customers.
A great example of how, by using data and analytics, we are able to be more agile and experiment with new techniques is the evolution of our website, www.sas.com. With millions of visitors to our site, most of whom initially find us through an organic web search, analytics is critical for determining how we leverage a person’s time on the site. With scoring and nurturing efforts, we have experienced conversion rates at 20 percent to 30 percent. Just as importantly, we have enhanced the overall experience for our customers when they do visit our website by making ourselves available to talk with them if they have questions. That’s something we’ve added with our relatively new, integrated, online chat capabilities that allow members of our customer contact center to respond in real time to visitors’ questions.
Adding the chat technology actually began as a skunk-works test program under Aaron Hill, Senior Director of Digital Strategy
Marketing Analytics at Work
Using Data to Justify Additional Resources
In the last decade, live chat has gone from a website curiosity to a mainstay on corporate sites. For companies selling business-to-business solutions, the use of chat is an immediate way to answer questions and establish dialogues with customers, even on their first visit.
SAS began investing significantly in chat resources in 2008, and each passing month brought new levels of engagement. Initially, the contact center operated from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. eastern (US), Monday through Friday. The staff answered questions, provided links to resources, and often initiated a valuable early sales contact with prospective customers.
By 2013, the team realized that web traffic supported the need for coverage later in the day to help meet the requirements of customers in the western United States and Canada. As a temporary measure, the team started to work an altered shift from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. as a pilot, but that left the group understaffed earlier in the day.
At the same time, the scope of the group supporting live chat expanded to include social media engagement on Twitter, LinkedIn, and other channels. Soon, the contact center was at a crossroads. With a longer workday, more engagement options, and the same staff, marketing leadership had to make changes to meet the increased demand.
The Challenge
The contact center team faced a dilemma found in many marketing groups. The team supported a high-volume activity, but there weren’t enough resources to cover additional efforts such as more channels (social media plus live chat) and a longer workday.
Because the contact center worked closely with inside sales to pass on leads, the marketing leaders proposed a partnership with their sales counterparts. Marketing would increase the operating hours for the contact center to include more coverage for West Coast customers and others on our website later in the day. It would also expand its reach to include more complete coverage of social media channels, as well as discussion forums, as part of a global social media monitoring and response program.
To justify the increased resources, the contact center turned to historical data on chat traffic to determine:
- Web visitors whose behavior indicated a likely lead
- Chat acceptance rate
- Rate of chats to leads
- Number of leads passed to sales • Rate of chats to sales conversions
- Close rate of deals originated by chat
The Approach
The marketing leadership team used the data from contact center interactions to justify hiring additional resources.
The team applied SAS algorithms to historical live-chat results, creating a virtual view of the results the sales team could expect with additional resources. The team applied the same approach to lead conversions and close rates and also added resources to the analysis. Based on these extrapolations, the marketing team could predict the workload and sales leads from each additional staff member and what that would mean to the bottom line. The analysis also showed how the team could interact more effectively across social channels and, as an additional benefit, help SAS recruit attendees to events.
With better data about the historical performance of live-chat sessions, the team members accurately predicted the outcomes of adding additional resources. Rather than simply asking for resources based on gut feel, they made a strong, data-driven presentation to executive leadership. They got the approval, and the contact center hired new staff.
The Results
Soon after adding the new resources, the team began to see that the expanded contact center was living up to expectations. Extended coverage hours and additional contact center resources helped generate more leads for sales from inbound channels. The data showed that these leads had the highest likelihood of converting to sales opportunities and revenue. The additions contributed directly to the bottom line and validated the analysis conducted to justify the new positions.
The team has also become more active in social channels, expanding the company’s presence and allowing the marketing organization to be more proactive. For example, a new Twitter handle—@SAS_Cares—gives customers an additional service channel for quick responses to their questions as well as timely notifications and helpful tips.
Technology, who recognized that all the content on our website might actually be confusing to a visitor, especially someone who simply wanted a price quote. Hill told me he equated the situation with entering a home improvement store and wandering the aisles looking for the right product. How happy we become, therefore, when someone steps out from behind the cash register to help us. In the end, we as customers appreciate help and buy more as a result. Hill thought chat could bring similar benefits to our customers and business. He was right; we’ve seen a much higher conversion rate among visitors to our website who engage with us via chat.
This is an excerpt from Adele Sweetwood’s The Analytical Marketer. Get your copy here.
Credit: Abhishek Singh
Forever Is A Lie: Prologue
On the Eve of His Twenty-Eighth Birthday
9 November 2010
He looks at the arrangement on the terrace of a forty-floor high-rise in Mumbai. A cosy mattress, a transparent tent and five love candles around it. He heaves a sigh of satisfaction. He recently bought the terrace and the floor below it without telling her about it. Tonight he will turn one of her fantasies into reality. They will make love under the stars. Tonight he will also realize his five-year-old dream. He will ask her to marry him the moment the clock strikes twelve—on the eve of his twenty-eighth birthday. He has never been happier.
She is attending a corporate training programme, which is due to end in an hour, at a resort in Lonavla. She has checked her watch at least ten times in the last five minutes. Time seems not to be at its usual pace today. She does a quick mental math for the umpteenth time. Five more minutes for the training session to get over, two minutes to greet everyone, say goodbye, another two minutes to hit the highway and then a couple of hours to reach Mumbai if there’s no untoward traffic. She has already asked her friend, an expert at baking, to make his favourite: blueberry cheesecake. She will make a detour after she reaches Mumbai to collect the cake, which will not take more than half an hour. She will reach his place by 10 p.m. Good, she tells herself and checks her watch yet another time.
The tent is right in the middle of the terrace. He places the smooth white mattress inside and puts a soft blanket over it. The air has just the right amount of chill, which makes him crave for her. For a moment, he can almost see the two of them becoming one inside the tent. He snaps out of the tempting reverie and readjusts the position of the candles. Tonight should be the perfect night, the kind lovers fantasize about, or so he has in mind. He places a sixth candle, a fake one, right above the mattress, where they will place their heads. It is actually a candle-shaped box and has a diamond ring inside.
She feels elated to hear the final ‘thank you for being such a nice batch’ from the trainer. The session is officially over for the day. She rushes out, greeting whomever she meets on her way. Almost everyone asks her if she wants to accompany them to Lion’s Point, a famous mountaintop, but she politely says no and calls her driver.
Satisfied with the preparation on the terrace, he makes his way to the flat and heads straight into the kitchen. He had googled and written down the recipe of sun-dried tomato risotto, her favourite, on a
Post-it note. He has also arranged for Montoya Cabernet Sauvignon—one of the best red wines in the world—as the perfect accompaniment. Suddenly he wants to hear her voice and decides to call her.
She is in the car now. She picks up her phone to call him and finds him calling her. This is how synchronized they are in their relationship. Be it matters of the heart or the mind, they are always on the same page. And it’s this very perfect timing that has gently pushed them into seeking a forever together every day. She says a soft hello into the phone.
He talks to her for some time and then lies that he has some important official work to complete. He has never been the kind who would surprise anybody, but this time he wants everything to be special, a memory that would last forever. She believes his lie. He cuts the call and wears an apron.
She hums her favourite romantic song while checking the photo gallery of her phone. Her car climbs the treacherous roads of Lonavla, with hills on one side and a gorge on the other. A boulder is displaced a few feet above the road that her car is on. Tearing the safety net around the boulders, placed to stop them from sliding down abruptly, it falls exactly on top of her car. It crushes the vehicle out of shape and the driver and her out of recognition. Her heartbeat stops almost immediately.
He keeps waiting to surprise her.