The Times of India – The Metrognome

Artist, writer and former journalist Prakash Bal Joshi flies to Izmir, Turkey, tomorrow to participate in an international art festival.

by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Noted self-taught artist Prakash Bal Joshi flies to Izmir, Turkey tomorrow to showcase his work at the biennial international art festival to be held there. The 60-something Joshi, a Mulund resident, was chosen to participate with 49 other artists out of a total 2,500 in the festival that will be organised by the local university as well as the National Museum of Art, and will see the exhibition of select artists’ works as well as debates and discussions on art.

Joshi is no stranger to international showings – he has previously shown at Europe’s biggest art festival at Basel in ‘Art Basel, Switzerland’ in 2012 as well as done a solo showing at Colorida Art Gallery at Lisbon, Portugal, in 2010 and the Las Vegas International Exhibition of select artists in 2010, among others. He has also exhibited widely all across in India.

A former journalist with leading newspapers (he retired a few years ago from The Times of India, Mumbai), Joshi tells us that working with newspapers “widened his perspective”. He says, “I was good at Maths and Science as a student, but I had a strange pull towards Arts. I finally chose the Science stream, but I would put down my thoughts and draw small illustrations as well, just as a hobby.” Joshi is also one of the torchbearers of what he calls the ‘golden period of Indian journalism’ – the Emergency. “As reporters, we had unbelievable freedom to research stories and go to their absolute depths. This grounding helped me later as well, when I started painting as a hobby.

“Also, when we worked in newspapers, our written articles would go to the editing desk and come back only after an hour or more. In the mean time, I would sit and sketch.” To this day, however, he confesses that the biggest challenge for him lies not in completing a painting to his complete satisfaction, but to empty his mind completely before he picks up the brush.

The ‘natural’ connect

Joshi confesses to a mysterious connect with rivers and nature, something which probably stems from his childhood tryst with swimming in a river and almost being drowned. He is known to use rivers as a visual metaphor to portray the flow of life, and his dismay at the loss of many rivers to the ravages of time. “I am sometimes asked about painting in a noisy city like Mumbai. But I am fascinated by the city’s crowds and its travel patterns as well.

For the last 15 years, Joshi has actively pursued his passion for painting, despite the demands of a high-pressure job. “I made the switch to canvas several years ago, and I have followed a set routine despite my job – I would come home every evening, zone out completely, then paint for two hours,” he says. He has set up a small studio in his house, and credits his family with astonishing levels of patience with his work. “Those around you begin by not understanding what you are up to, but they develop with you,” he says. “As an artist, you take it for granted that most people may not understand your work, so you reconcile yourself to working without waiting for acceptance.”

He is now waiting to experiment with oil pastels next, a medium he has never worked with before.

(Pictures courtesy Prakash Bal Joshi)

Editors from hell

Could sub-editors please be more careful while editing articles? And giving away e-mail IDs and phone numbers is not cool.

by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Okay, first off, Mid Day. What were you thinking with this story of a boy arrested because he sent a photo cake to a girl he liked? Your story is eminently readable, but what was your sub-editor and page editor doing when they overlooked one important detail while checking the story: your paper printed the email ID the boy used to send the girl’s picture to the cakewallahs.

What’s worse, NDTV‘s website picked up your story, and printed it as is. No, not really as is, because NDTV changed the story’s headline to the puzzling: ‘In trouble for sending photo of cake to a girl’. A question to the NDTV sub-editor who changed the headline: Why did you change Mid Day‘s headline to read ‘photo of cake’ when you clearly meant ‘photo cake’? (An aside here is that the story would be doubly interesting if the boy had actually sent just a photo of the cake and not the cake itself. If somebody did that to me, I sure as hell would go to the cops.)

A few days ago, a Mumbai daily carried the headline, ‘Man shoots dead builder’. At first glance, it seemed like a case of extreme cruelty – I mean, why shoot a dead man? Another news item last month, about a man making prank calls to a woman at work, gave away the telephone number the calls were made from.

All of this makes the police’s precaution of hiding an accused’s face from public pretty redundant.

And it’s not just newspapers, it’s also television. A few days ago, IBN Lokmat did a charming special on Dev Anand’s birth anniversary, and showed the late actor’s songs and a few interviews of people who had worked with him. Each song was accompanied with the lyrics of that song being flashed across the screen. But when the song ‘Ek but banaoonga…’ from Asli Naqli started, IBN Lokmat’s lyrics read, ‘Ek putar banaoonga…’

A rather funny and insensitive editing error occurred recently with The Times of India placing an ad for Good Day right in the centre of a grim news story of a man killing his own kids (see pic on left). Other regular offences that editors commit are publishing pictures of minors, whether accused of a crime or the victims of one, without blurring their faces or changing their names, and often choosing to blur the faces of women and not men.

And it’s not just obvious elements like headlines and what goes in the main story that comprises editing goof-ups. Several times, reporters write an article with an obvious slant – for instance, political and crime stories, in which the writer’s biases clearly reflect in the article he/she has written – but editors checking those copies let the slant remain. The result is stories such as the Bidushi Dash Barde case, in which most reports blamed the dead woman’s husband without actually saying so, with phrases like, ‘He called her only once in the morning despite knowing that she was ill’, and ‘He was calm and answered all questions without breaking down.’

When I still worked with newspapers full time, I had an almost daily run-in with the paper’s editors. Once I waged a war against a particular sub-editor, who had not only mangled my story, but changed the headline I had given to the story with the sensitivity of a speeding truck. Imagine my chagrin when I read the papers the next morning and saw that the sub-editor had altered my headline ‘Youth win award for propagating gender equality’ to ‘Youth win award for fighting molestation’.

I used to think sub-editors and editors above them are people with eyes like hawks, and the brain capacity of an encyclopedia. At least, that’s how they used to be. Earlier ‘deskies’ were people who used to be reporters, and journalists who read constantly on a variety of subjects. This sharpened their intellect – an editor had to know more on a subject than a reporter – and gave their language an edge. And you couldn’t become a deskie just by applying for an editor’s job; you had to slog your way through the reporting ranks before being elevated to a desk position.

For the last five years or more, however, newspapers and channels are increasingly hiring desk personnel for their knowledge of English alone. Proofing of articles has now been reduced only to grammar and spell checks, which even the reporter himself can do on MS Word. And then there are new concepts such as Rewrite Desks that are operational in major newspapers – this Desk’s job is to go batshit crazy on articles that have not been written well. In other places, we are told, there are three levels of editing to pass through before the article is considered final.

And despite all these precautions, we still end up with gems like ‘Photo of cake’.

May be we should have a Corrective Measures Desk above the sub-editing desk…?

Vrushali Lad is a freelance journalist who has spent several years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so.

(Feature image courtesy ipjtraining.com. Picture used for representational purpose only)