Let me present a clip or three of the unconventional thoughts therein. Here’s one about teaching dancesport:

“The strange thing about the dancing world is that it is the only world I know where the customer is always wrong … Don’t do this, don’t do that, you’ve to do this, you’ve have to do that… the customer is always wrong. Because when the customer is right, you have nothing else to say, your business is finished.”

Relating that to an earlier quote in the same video, I get the impression that Burns is stressing something that many trainers (the lecture was meant for them), in their alacrity to achieve perfection in their couples, often forget:

The mind of the athlete. The need to nurture it.

Perhaps I am leaping to a conclusion here, but anecdotal evidence from a number of dancers I have spoken to about this suggests that the mental makeup of the trainee is not something most trainers see as a priority. Some time ago, on the eve of a big competition, I happen to speak to a professional couple who had just finished their final lessons. What the lady had to say illustrates my point:

“We had a rubbish day today. Our teachers were not happy. They say we are not dancing like champions.”

Some food for thought there for dancers and trainers alike, I think. If there is no positive frame of mind, there is no athlete.

Burns speaks more about the relationship between the trainer and the dancers – rather, the contribution of the trainer to the competitive success of a couple:

“No teacher is capable of telling the dancer enough information to win. I think that most people who win, it is 10, 20, maybe 40, maybe even 50 or 60 per cent is what they hear from the teacher in a lesson. And the rest is their own input. I don’t think teachers make champions, actually.”

What a teacher can do, Burns says, is contribute, help the couple along:

“I think some [teachers] are good at guiding people through the water, to avoid the rocks … I think most of the creativity is within that person. And the best I offer anybody is their own style.”

Towards the end, he returns to the power-of-the-mind theme, with a burst about imagery:

“I think the most important thing for a dancer and the couple is to visualise … have a fantasy about how they are going to dance that competition – all five dances. Now that is not something you teach really.”

Let me leave you with that. If you would like to pick up the commentary, the comment box is yours – enjoy.

Been thinking, a lot, also about Epicretold – suppose, just suppose, there were newspapers then, the equivalents of The Times of India and The Sun and The New York Times and the BBC. How would they have narrated the Kurukshetra war and the events that led to it?

I guess my interest in such a narrative is driven in the main by my fascination with ‘war journalism’. It is not difficult to see war coverage as serialised storytelling: episode after episode of drama, over weeks and months and years, with conflict, escalation and resolution, the same major characters weaving in and out accompanied by the same minor actors – all coming together to form an overarching narrative, which, I dare say, pretty well follows the shape of Freytag’s pyramid.

Interesting to think, then, of how the Mahabharata can be told as news. Can the story be strung together as a series of media reports? Would such storytelling make sense to a reader, particularly one not familiar with the storyline? Would it help him/her create own narrative of that ‘reality’?

Solely in the spirit of experiment, here’s a take. I see this as appearing in an ‘international’ newspaper – call it what you will (and drop me a line if you come up with an interesting name):

Pandu family returns
King welcomes Kunti, sons with ‘open arms’

By Our Royal Correspondent

HASTINAPUR:  The family of King Pandu, the renunciant royal who died in the Shatashringa forests in a mysterious accident last week, returned yesterday to a grand ceremony that spilled out on to the streets of the capital city.

The royal widow Kunti and her sons – Yudhishtira (7), Bhima (6), Arjuna (5) and the twins Nakula and Sahadeva (4) – were met at the city gates by Bhishma, the patron of the royal clan, and driven through the high street in a chariot drawn by seven horses at the head of a ceremonial procession.

Accompanied by a select group of palace officials and personal maids, Queen Gandhari welcomed Kunti at the palace gates.

“It is good to be in Hastinapur again,” Kunti said, wiping away tears. “My sons are finally back where they belong.”

At the palace, the family were taken straight to King Dhritarashtra for a private meeting. A palace official present on the occasion said the king was overcome with “tears of joy”.

“I welcome my brother’s family with open arms,” the king said in a statement released later. “This is their kingdom and I am glad they have returned. Now I have five more sons.”

While reports about the cause of Pandu’s death remain sketchy, palace sources confirmed that Madri, his second wife, had opted for the practice of Sati, stepping into his funeral pyre, as “befitting a princess and loving spouse”.

Pandu, though second in line to the Hastinapur kingdom, had ascended the throne 11 years ago, superseding his elder brother Dhritarashtra, who, owing to his blindness, had been deemed unfit by his elders. However, seven years ago, for reasons not yet clear, Pandu had renunciated the kingdom while on a hunting trip to the Shatashringa forests.

He had lived there since, fathering five sons – Yudhishtira, Bhima and Arjuna with Kunti, and Nakula and Sahadeva with the younger Madri.

The Kuru Kingdom, which lies north of the Vindhyas bordering Panchala, is one of the largest in the region, and has been traditionally ruled from Hastinapur, ‘the city of elephants’. Though under King Dhritarashtra the kingdom has seen relative stability and peace, his ability to rule has always been questioned. The king, born blind, is seen as ‘unfit to rule’ by many, including Bhishma, his grandfather. Queen Gandhari’s self-imposed blindness – since the day she found out her betrothed was blind, the former princess of Gandhara has chosen to wear a black blindfold – has not helped his case.

The death of King Pandu and the unexpected return of his family have brought a feeling of unrest in the palace. A highly-placed source, who did not want to be identified, said the king had to be persuaded by Bhishma to invite Kunti and sons to Hastinapur.

“The royal politics is likely to be murkier in the coming years,” the source said.

Treat this as the equivalent of an ‘establishing’ shot, the beginning of this narrative. The next take could be from a Hastinapur-based newspaper – a human interest story perhaps, on the five little boys, the Pandavas. And, yes, there could a political commentary or a news analysis, which would expand on the last quote of the report above.

Guess I will be back with more.

ALSO SEE: The End of Childhood

Image courtesy http://bit.ly/9azpHi

IN THE EARLY 1950s, an American anthropologist named Ray Birdwhistell became seriously fascinated with the scene in a middleclass English pub in London. After studying recordings of the exchanges there long and hard, he came to an interesting conclusion:

Sixty-five per cent of the meaning in a human interaction is communicated nonverbally – by way of body motion (head position, posture, etc), facial expression, eye contact, tone of voice (pitch, inflection, that sort of thing), and paralanguage (the ‘ahem’, ‘aah’, ‘hmmm’ and the like that fill our everyday conversation).

Birdwhistell was convinced body movements form a communication system identical to verbal language (he called it kinesics, deliberately analogous to linguistics), which could be read as ‘phrases’, similar to spoken words and sentences. Albert Mehrabian, who followed a similar line of research, came to another dramatic conclusion more than a decade later: 93 per cent of the attitudinal message – the emotional or ‘relationship-level’ substance, as opposed to the factual or ‘content-level’ info (see Message from Mars 2 for an expansion) – is transmitted by nonverbal channels.

While scholars since have questioned the generalisability of the studies, and the findings themselves have been widely misrepresented (the Mehrabian formulation is often cited to overzealously claim 93 per cent of the total meaning is communicated nonverbally, for instance), this much can be said with some certainty: nonverbal channels contribute much to what meaning we gather from another’s communication.

Simply put, nonverbal signals determine to a significant extent how the receiver hears your message – positively or negatively, as ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

Trouble is, humans are more tuned in to decode negative cues. For instance, a negative inflection will make a disproportionately stronger impact on the receiver than the verbal content. So the dancer who feeds back “You are rushing me” – which, on its own, is not bad – is likely to do more damage if s/he delivers that in the wrong tone of voice. And if the accompanying body language – facial expression, posture etc – is also negative, well, the couple certainly has another issue.

What if the verbal content is positive, but the nonverbal cues are not? In such cases, there is evidence that the nonverbal channels will triumph; the receiver is more likely to derive a negative meaning (particularly if the accompanying facial expression, the most potent of nonverbal channels, supports such a communication). Your verbal message, hence, could be something as positive as “That was better!” But if delivered with discrepant nonverbal signals (furrowed brow, set lips, any other cue that contributes to an ‘unhappy’ expression), your partner is unlikely to be thrilled. On the other hand, try it with an ‘in sync’ cue (a smile, vocal warmth). It would add to the positive verbal content and you just could make someone’s day.

Nonverbal communication, thus, can be seen to contextualise the verbal message in many cases. They accentuate, temper, even contradict the content, allowing the receiver to arrive at a ‘suitable’ judgement of meaning. Effective athlete-athlete communication calls for a respectful awareness of these channels. A good communicator chooses his/her words carefully; sufficient care needs to be taken with nonverbal cues as well for constructive communication.

Maintaining ‘integrity of purpose’

At times it is a good idea to step back and ask ourselves this: why did I just say/do what I just said/did?

Keep in mind on such occasions there is more to interpersonal communication than the obvious purpose of disclosing and gaining information. Psychologist William Schutz saw communication as serving three fundamental human needs: inclusion (to establish an identity with the other involved, a standing), affection (to build a relationship, to be liked), and control (to prove one’s ability, exercise leadership). My impression is that most partners see their talk as nothing but information exchange, directly aimed at improving their performance.

But it is rarely that. Underlying that is a human need – and it is here that some soul-searching could come in useful. Was your message really aimed at educating the partnership (“Shaping away before that step-hop could help me follow better”)? Was it an instruction, an attribution of blame – something aimed at gaining control (“Take your head away from my space!”/”We are off-balance because your head weight is in the wrong place!”)? Perhaps it is a form of defensive aggression, an attempt to protect yourself from a possible critique by getting in a word first (interpretable as falling into the identity categorisation, an attempt to negotiate a standing)? Or a stress-relieving tactic, just venting your frustration?

This goes for nonverbal communication as well. Every facial expression, every gesticulation can be taken to be a subconscious – in some cases, conscious – negotiation of identity, an attempt at control, a quest for affection, perhaps a mix thereof.

An understanding of our real communication motives, thus, is important. Reflecting on why we say/do what we say/do allows us to strive for what we could call ‘integrity of purpose’ (the assumption is that most dancers’ actions are aimed at improving performance), protecting us to some extent from the ‘dishonest’ motives our very human needs push us into.

Widen coach-athletes communication

It is common in dancesport for couples to have more than one trainer. This poses an interesting question regarding the constitution of their competitive team: who all does it include?

The couple? The couple and their main trainer? The couple and all their trainers?

What impact does the absence of a dedicated trainer (even the one who a couple considers their main trainer often teaches their competitors as well), and the utilisation of shared trainers, have on a partnership – specifically on their communication demands?

I am sticking my neck out here, but my hypothesis is that given the situation, most couples ‘close ranks’, containing the team membership to own selves, perhaps with a limited provision for the main trainer.

While this is eminently pragmatic, it could also lead to a constrained communication situation. The feeling the trainer is ‘shared’ – and consequently not-so-much part of the team – provides for a less-than-wholesome communication from the athletes. This is compounded by the trainer’s knowledge that the couple concerned also has other trainers, including rival coaches. The multiple personalities involved in the training process arguably produce a more complex situation, which requires better communication – but as the athletes are likely to see only themselves as the team, there is a good chance they share less with the ‘outsider’ (trainer).

Perhaps a conscious effort need to be made by the athletes to involve the trainers – particularly the main trainer – more, to ‘talk over’ issues so they are better positioned to contribute. As involvement spurs interest, this could pay strategic dividends.

Strive for motivational communication

The link between motivation and performance is well-established in sports psychology, but very often the contribution of communication to that equation is ill-addressed. Think of the times you have seen your partner dejected at training — could you have said something that might have helped?

This is another area that competitive couples could – should, I would argue – take a more awakened interest in. Dancesport creates a unique situation, where motivational sources are limited (no dedicated coach or manager, for instance, and no other team members to step in) — which places the onus of keeping each other’s spirit alive squarely on the dancers themselves.

Easier said than done, but a basic exercise would be to avoid communication that is demotivating. Not always possible, but being conscious your partner is considerably dependent on your feedback – as there are no baskets to sink or goals to score, an important measure of performance is how it ‘felt’ to you – for his/her optimism is a good start. Though you might have the best intentions at heart, communication that stresses continually on what is not working can be demotivating, and your partner could well get locked in the ‘there’s-no-pleasing-this-person-so-why-bother’ zone.

The trick could be to ensure there is enough positive feedback – stuff that is motivational – as well, so that some kind of balance is achieved. A simple exercise: for every problem you want to bring to your partner’s attention, think of two things that have gone well. And – this is important – deliver the ‘good’ news in a way that will make your partner believe it, with ‘in sync’ nonverbal cues. That will certainly make a difference.

For the project ‘Communication in Dancesport’, we are looking to interview/share ideas with dancesport athletes, trainers and enthusiasts. If you would like to be involved, please leave a note. More contact details here.

Image courtesy: http://tiny.cc/B8yhm

THIS BIT IS OBVIOUS: the quality of communication depends to a large extent on the ability of the communicators involved. Essentially, on their clarity of thought, information processing and analytical capabilities, strength of articulation, listening skills, respect for communication cues such as turn-taking, etc. We all know people who are a ‘pleasure to talk to’ and people we struggle to hold a half-decent conversation with – also, those we think of as ‘difficult’, ‘argumentative’, ‘confrontational’.

Whether ‘good’ or ‘bad’ communication takes place depends to a large extent, thus, on the participants. And their awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses as communicators, their self-reflexiveness about their verbal and non-verbal contributions, is a fundamental step in facilitating better interaction.

The relation is also kind of cyclical: productive communication produces a supportive climate where meaningful and problem-orientated exchanges can take place, and sets the stage for more of the same. Ditto, negative communication. It encourages a defensive climate, leading to more of counterproductive communication and conflict.

Tips for the athlete? Five actionable points stand out.

One, try to be more aware of your ‘communicative self’.  Analyse own weaknesses, strengths. Ask others. And ask your partner. When does s/he ‘get’ you? When not? A self-awareness of this sort will serve as a ‘mind the gap’ in difficult situations.

Two, think before you speak. What you are about to say, is that significant enough to communicate? Is it actionable? That is, will it serve a positive purpose? Remember, you do not have to voice every thought, every feeling you have on the floor. ‘Information overload’ is tough on your partner, so pick and choose sensibly. You don’t want to be the boy/girl who cried ‘wolf’. You want to be listened to seriously every time you speak.

Three, think how you will speak. What we need to remind ourselves here is that communication occurs at the ‘content’ (the factual information, the ‘what’ of the message) and ‘relationship’ (the emotional info, the ‘how’ of the message) levels. The latter links to the delivery of the former; it is the dressing, the presentation, and can distract from – and corrupt – the real substance of the message. So right, that feather step was terrible. But perhaps you can get that point across without quite saying, “You are rushing me through, you dunderhead! You are not giving me time to lower.” Conventional wisdom advocates us to avoid the finger-pointing ‘you’ in such situations (I would modify that and say, reserve the ‘you statements’ for special occasions, but even there take the bite out of it with a smile, a softer tone). Bring in the ‘I’, instead. Rather than assign blame for what went wrong, describe the problem. Say what you felt, what could be done differently. “I feel quite rushed there and need more time to lower” is a lot less damaging than the first version.

Four, reserve definitive statements for definitive occasions (this is in a way an amplification of the point above, mind). The danger here is that cut-and-dry statements often ascribe blame and come across as quite aggressive. “That didn’t work because you were in the wrong position” constrains productive communication. For one, it is most likely to put your partner on the defensive, which is never a good start. Also, you may be setting yourself up for a knock down. There is a good chance your analysis is only partially correct, or even incorrect; there could easily be factors you have overlooked (perhaps your partner was in the wrong position because you had overturned – whatever). So hold your horses, repeat the figure a few times before you arrive at a conclusion. And even then, leave yourself elbow room – else, if challenged, you risk loss of face (and the consequential negative emotional responses, which could end with a ‘lash out’ to regain ‘face’).

Five, listen. Honestly listen. To be a good communicator, you need to be a good listener. Theorists call it active listening, which they differentiate from superficial (where you tune out as soon as you think you have enough information to decipher the speaker’s meaning) and arrogant listening (simply put, where you listen for pauses so you can say what you want to say). Active listening is about dedicating your attention – as complete of it as possible – to the speaker, to the factual and emotional substance of the message. It goes beyond allowing the speaker to finish his/her say (which is always a good start, mind). It is about proactively setting up what I would call a listening ground, creating a communicative space for your partner to fill (verbal silence could be a good tool; there can only be so much space for ‘talk’ on the floor, so if you keep a steady stream of statements, you would have little to listen to), aiding the transmission of the message (‘minimal encouragers’ such as ‘Mmm’, ‘Okay’, nods, eye contact), questioning to clarify (“So you would like me to angle it a bit more?”), and verbal (‘Let’s try that then’) or non-verbal responses (dancing out the change your partner requested, for instance) that will make the listener feel listened to. Not an easy skill, but it could save your partnership a lot of trouble.

Continuing reading this article: Why we should mind the non-verbals

Read part 1 of this article

For the project ‘Communication in Dancesport’, we are looking to interview/share ideas with dancesport athletes, trainers and enthusiasts. If you would like to be involved, please leave a note. More contact details here.

Image: kind courtesy www.paulabecker.com

ONE OF THE burning regrets in my life is that I do not speak fluent Venusian. The nuances of the language have eluded me despite my best efforts, and I am slowly beginning to accept that I will never fully comprehend it.

I have also realised the average Venusian has little knowledge of the language of Mars – for the length of this intro, let’s take John Gray’s sweeping generalisation founded on the gender differences hypothesis without the mandatory sack of salt – and absorbs a lot less of her partner’s communication than is ideal.

Which can be a recipe for disaster in competitive ballroom.

The extreme interdependency in dancesport – after marriage, it is the highest form of contact sport, I believe – produces a different kind of team dynamics, requiring a more sensitive and demanding communicative chemistry. My own research into this – mostly by way of proactive eavesdropping on the practice floor – stresses the need for better verbal and non-verbal interaction, particularly during the extended practice sessions most competitive couples tend to put in. Just count the number of times you have seen malevolent stares and rolling eyes on the floor this week, and heard “You are dragging me!”, “What are you trying to do?” and “You are too high!”, and you begin to get the picture.

Fortunately, ‘good’ partnerships manage to work through this somehow. The high levels of intrinsic motivation – the degree to which a participant’s engagement in the sport is driven by his/her inherent interest in it – and task orientation – the pleasure s/he derives from acquiring the ability to perform the activity in question effectively – that most successful athletes seem to have arguably help them tide over it, and partners evolve their own ways of negotiating the situation.

That is great. But counterproductive athlete-athlete communication – and I use it as an umbrella term to include non- and mis-communication as well – is still limiting. At best, it is a frustrating irritant; at worst, a major drag on the performance resources of the partnership.

Again, as many scholars would agree, so long as there is continuing communication, there is bound to be miscommunication; perfect communication is as much a rarity as the perfect dance (and that, as we know, happens only on Strictly). Still, there is plenty dancers can do to bridge the communication gap and encourage better performance.

Which brings us to this column. The idea is to present some broad thoughts that competitive dancers might find useful. This comes very early in a research project that sports psychologist Amanda Wilding and I are engaged in at the Bournemouth University, into a need gap we have identified – surprising how little academic attention dancesport has received despite its popularity – and is in no way exhaustive, but, hopefully, it is a beginning, some food for thought…

Recognise the centrality of communication

Communication is the glue that holds together a partnership (for that matter, any group, big or small), yet it is not something we consciously focus on or work at improving. An excellent piece of indicative evidence is the space most sports texts fail to dedicate to this crucial aspect. By and large, sports psychologists and coaches write about concepts supported by communication (motivation, goal-setting, leadership, teambuilding, that sort of thing), relegating communication itself to the backyard, a small section tucked away somewhere deep inside.

In the practical sphere, elite athletes seem to comprehend the significance of communication. But this comprehension, I get the feeling, is rather peripheral, leading to not much concrete action on it. Most dancers reflect on the positives and negatives of a training session, but how many actually analyse his/her communication and think, “Shucks, I shouldn’t have put it that way when I fed back on that running weave. Next time I will phrase it differently!”

A more awakened recognition of the centrality of communication is needed if dancers are to proactively work on improving it. Think of communication the same way you think of maintaining a strong ‘centre’ while dancing. Imagine letting your core muscles go as you begin your routine. Will you survive? Not. Soon everything collapses – your frame, your posture, your connection, your footwork. Communication serves the same central purpose in a partnership, and needs to be recognised – and worked on – as much.

Expect to misunderstand – and be misunderstood

Also known as ‘Be prepared to clarify – and listen to clarification’. Osmo Wiio, a Finnish communications scholar, has an interesting take on this, which can be summarised thus: if communication can fail, it will. Now that may be an overtly pessimistic view – Wiio has come up with the equivalent of Murphy’s law for communications, a set of seven-plus statements, every single one as discouraging as its fellows (read a commentary on it here) – but it is telling on the issues we face in our interpersonal interactions.

Fact is, communication is never simple. The thought we ‘encode’ (formulate our message into words) and ‘transmit’ (speak or write or telephone or email that message) to the listener is rarely received and ‘decoded’ (reconstructed into a message from the words received) the way we meant it to be.

There is too much ‘noise’ – anything that distracts, interferes – going on as we encode, as we transmit, as we decode (articulation or language issues, bias and preconceptions, personality, attention span, whether your boss yelled at you that day; besides of course ‘external’ interferences such as someone calling for your attention, your partner’s verbal or non-verbal cues, bad ‘turn-taking’, loud music, etc, etc), too many variables to wrestle with. Proof? Just think of the times you hear “No, that’s not what I meant!” or “You are twisting my words!” as you go about your business.

So, in essence, expect to be misunderstood – and be prepared to remedy that misunderstanding, to rearticulate your message in a different way. Equally important, expect to misunderstand. Be aware of the danger, and – this is crucial – cultivate the patience to hear the partner out when s/he says the magic words (or the equivalent thereof), “Let me clarify that…” Take it at face value, then reanalyse, modify your own earlier response. Not much purpose will be served if you stick to your guns and go, “No, that’s not what you just said!”

Continue reading this article: Message from Mars 2

Image: Kind courtesy clipart.com

The anti-war bit was perhaps expected, given the occasion and the hullabaloo in his own country about accepting Israeli hospitality at a time of battle in Gaza. Murakami projects war as the product of the System, which victimises its very creators, us, fragile-as-egg individuals. Here’s a clip:

I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called the System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong — and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others’ souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.

Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow the System to exploit us. We must not allow the System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made the System. That is all I have to say to you.

In all this, a writer’s job? To lay out the truth on a bed of magnificent lies – so it is visible to the world. To sound an alarm, thus, to the System. Quote:

I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.

Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and military men tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling lies. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics.

And why should that be? Murakami’s answer:

…by telling skillful lies — which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true — the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.

More:

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on the System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist’s job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories — stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.

Read the complete speech here.

SO where are we, nearly a month after epicretold began?

Bhima, our hero, is firmly installed in the palace of Hastinapur, as second in line to the throne, ready to take on the many hardships that life, and the Kauravas, are about to throw at him. It has taken 100-plus tweets — do note that minor landmark, folks — to get him this far, and along the journey, ER has acquired 1,405 followers.

The month has also improved my knowledge of twiction and twitterature. I am now aware, thanks to the responses to the NPR coverage of this attempt,  that James McCormick has beaten me to the punch, beginning to tweet a full-fledged novel written by his late wife Alice as early as May 2008. Then there is Roger Morris, posting his novel, A Gentle Axe (read it here). Also, Matt Stewart, with The French Revolution (read it here). And soon after ER began, author Phillippa Gregory tweeted a limited version of her novel, The White Queen.

Then of course there is the most ambitious — and transient — of all such projects (read this post on Mashable), Amway’s The Twitter of the Shrew, which saw the  ’enactment’ of the The Taming of the Shrew from 19 Twitter accounts, presented over 12 days, one scene a day (talk about organisation and effort!)

I am, thus, in exalted company. There are one or two things that set ER apart from the attempts of my more literary colleagues, though.

The first is that while McCormick, Morris and Stewart are posting from what is already written, ER is being written as I post.  It is written for Twitter, on a day to day basis, the information ‘architectured’ with this specific platform in mind; not merely the transmission of a completed work meant for the conventional media in the unconventional media. So this, I suspect, is more of twiction, of ‘fiction to go’.

Second, ER has amassed more followers than A Gentle Axe (1,152 followers as of today), The French Revolution (962), or The White Queen (778). In Twitterian terms the 1,400-odd tally ER has is yawnable (the twitterati — particularly celebrities — have tens of thousands of followers), but for this particular ‘genre’, it is impressive. In this, ER has been helped considerably by the media attention it has received, which included coverage in Time, Reuters and NPR (interesting to analyse the why of that — but that’s another post).

So much for the stocktaking, which is only part the reason for this post. The other part is purely in the interest of readers, in response to the request VVKN and others have made — essentially, to provide a story so far, for latecomers to catch up. In that spirit here are the first 94 tweets on ER, which forms a section quite nicely — in my mind, I have titled it  ’Child’.

Enjoy.

__

I can’t help staring at the lady with the black cloth over her eyes. I feel disturbed, scared — but I can’t look away.

Pale, beautiful face. Black strip wound tight. Beneath it, the eyes – the eyes with which she wouldn’t see. Gandhari. Our aunt. The queen.

She hugs Mother. Then us five children. Yudhistira first, then me, Arjuna, the twins, Nakula and Sahadeva. Why is she sobbing?

“Come,” Aunt Gandhari says. “The king is waiting.” She turns. I see the knot of blindfold black against her gray hair. I stare.

I follow with Yudhistira, Mother and the young ones behind. The palace doors close behind us. So it is all true? We are really princes?

We had all lived in the forest. Us five, Mother, father Pandu and aunt Madri. The rishis there called Father king. I didn’t understand that.

I didn’t understand many things. Yudhistira said I was slow and stupid. But if father was king, why were we living in a forest lodge?

I never got answers. Still, life was fun. Yudhistira sat with rishis, Arjuna played at archery; I wandered, hunted rabbits with my toy mace.

And I swam. Sometimes when Yudhistira joined me, I would hold him under water. Maybe I was slow and stupid, but I was strong. Very strong.

That day Father had wandered off with aunt Madri, laughing. Mother sat by the window, still, silent. Then I heard the wailing.

I rushed out, Mother behind me. Aunt Madri fell into her arms sobbing. Father had slipped, she said, hit his head on a rock. He was dead.

I ran along the forest path to where Father lay, under the trees. There was blood on his face. I hadn’t known him well; now I wouldn’t.

Later they built a pyre. As the flames sprang up I saw Aunt Madri come out in her best robes. She hugged us each tight, walked to the pyre.

She circled it three times, head bent, lips moving. Then she turned, looked at us once — and walked into the flames.

I wanted to look away, but could not. Aunt Madri — she didn’t make a sound as the flames engulfed her.

Next day, men came in chariots. Mother spoke to them at length. After they left, she said, “We are going to Hastinapur, our kingdom.”

And now we’re walking through the palace — our palace? — with Aunt Gandhari. She walks alone, ahead, her blindfold black against her gray.

I know the story of that blindfold. A balladeer sang about it on our last night in the forest, the first time she ever sang about our clan.

Our aunt had vowed to cover her eyes, not see again, when she learnt she was to wed Dhritarashtra, blind prince of Hastinapur. Years ago.

She leads us to a doorway where two giant warriors cross spear points. They step aside. We walk into a huge hall, lit by dozens of lamps.

My feet, used to rough forest ground, slip on the polished marble. At the far end, on a golden throne, sits King Dhritarashtra. Our uncle.

He is huge — huge head, enormous chest, bulging arms — but not as huge as some of the woodcutters I have seen in the forest.

Our uncle is stronger than a thousand mad elephants, the balladeer had sung, the strongest man in the world. Is he — really?

He rises. The sightless eyes stare straight at Mother as she says, voice breaking, “I, Kunti, widow of your brother, bow before you.”

He blesses her, hugs her tight. Yudhistira steps forward and prostrates. Then it is my turn. I hesitate; someone pushes me forward.

He bends to touch my face, my shoulders, hands surprisingly soft. “Bhima has grown,” he says. “Only six, but so tall! He’ll make a warrior!”

His eyes are frightening — flat, cold, dead. They devour me. “I am glad you came,” he says finally, to Mother. “Now I have five more sons.”

I know the king has many sons — a hundred, the songs said. Why aren’t they here to greet us? I look around. And I see him.

He is my age, swathed in yellow silk robes. A gold necklace of many strands covers his chest. He stares at me fixedly from behind a pillar.

I smile. He keeps staring. Then abruptly he turns and walks away. I stand there feeling foolish, angry at the boy, angrier at myself.

I do not see him the next day. Or the next. But late one evening the next week, I find myself facing him in one of the smaller courtyards.

I am returning from another wander. Yudhistira has taken well to palace life — to the silk robes, the maids, the sleeping chambers. Not me.

I miss the forests, my old carefree life; I spend much of my time outdoors. This time when I get back the boy is standing in the shadows.

I have guessed who he is. Duryodhana, uncle Dhritarashtra’s son, eldest of the Kaurava brothers. My cousin, who turned his back on my smile.

He steps forward. I stop. I do not smile. “So you are the one,” he says. “The Pandava born to destroy my clan!”

That is one of those things I have heard the maids whispering. That, and I was son of Vaayu, the God of Wind. I do not understand that.

I do not understand either why they say Yudhistira is the son of Lord Yama Dharma, Arjuna the son of Lord Indra. Was not Pandu our father?

Now I hear it, from the tongue of this haughty boy. “Nothing to say, fool?” he taunts. “They say you are stupid!” I feel my anger rising.

I step towards him. “Aside!” I say. Duryodhana’s eyes widen, the angry surprise of a palace prince unused to challenge. Then I see rage.

I do not wait. I push, my forehand against his gold-strung chest. I feel him resist, we strain for a split second. He stumbles sideways.

Duryodhana is taller, bigger. But I am stronger – born to the forest, not to palace maids. I leave him against the wall. I do not look back.

I wait for Mother to chastise me the next day. She has not heard. Even the maids, who hear everything about everyone, have not heard.

I am relieved — or am I? There is so much I want to ask Mother. Why do they say I am born to kill my own cousins? Why the tales about me?

The palace has changed our lives. Mother is rarely alone here; so it is days before I speak to her. She frowns at my questions. Sighs.

“Maids’ tales!” she says, sitting me down. “Do not pay heed. You are the son of Pandu, the second in line to the throne of Hastinapur.

“Someday your brother Yudhistira will be king. You are strong, very strong. It is your duty to support him, to protect him — always.

“It will not be easy… Pray to Vaayu, seek His blessings — be strong like the wind.”

That night standing by my window I close my eyes, I whisper: O, Vaayu, God of Wind, bless me, protect me from harm, make me strong like you.

And I feel the touch of a gentle breeze, a caress, an embrace, soothing me, wiping my fears away… my God is listening.

From then on every night I pray to Vaayu — and every night he responds, with the softest of touches, making me feel strong, protected.

The next weeks bring a sense of rhythm into my life. Mornings, I wake up early, to the sounds of conch and music from the palace courtyard.

The maids would be waiting, with hot water and fragrant oils for my bath. Then it is time for Vedic school, for which I am inevitably late.

The bath makes me hungry, and though forbidden to eat before school, I always stop to gulp down the meat dishes the maids smuggle to me.

Grandfather Bhishma and Uncle Vidura, the most revered of our relatives, say our studies have suffered and we need to make up quickly.

Grandfather has engaged a teacher, just for the five of us. Uncle Vidura’s sons were to join our class, but for some reason they never do.

Yudhistira is happy about that. Uncle Vidura, he says, is our father’s half-brother, born to a maid, his sons not of royal lineage.

“They are sudhras, lower caste,” he tells me. “They should not be allowed to sit with us kshatriyas anyway.”

That is the thing about my elder brother. So very conscious about who is inferior to him, who his peer, what is right, what wrong.

He loves the Vedic sessions. As for me, my favourite part of the day begins when we troop to Shukacharya to learn the crafts of war.

Our cousins are taught by Kripacharya. Grandfather says we have a lot to catch up. How good is Duryodhana then, I sometimes wonder.

Duryodhana pretends to ignore me, though I see him watching me at practice often. I love the sessions, but hate the way everyone treats me.

My teacher, my cousins, even my brothers, they all see me as fat, slow — and stupid. Kripacharya even says so, when he gets angry.

In his eyes Yudhistira excels with chariots, Arjuna with the bow and arrow. Me, I am good only to wrestle or fight with the mace.

Even there he sees Duryodhana as my better. He is wrong. They all are. Or maybe they just find it more amusing to laugh at the fat fool.

Let them laugh. Perhaps it is better they are blind to my strengths, blind to the extra hours I put in after lessons in quiet corners.

I am growing strong, powerful. And more agile, fast on my feet, swift of arm and eye — swift like Vaayu, the God I pray to every night.

In a chariot I am more fluid than Yudhistira. With the bow and arrow, though not blessed like Arjuna, I am more effective than most.

Where I am more deliberate, Arjuna finds the target with no conscious effort. He says he’ll be the greatest archer on earth. I believe him.

He believes the court singers’ tale that Indra, king of all gods, is his father. He prays to him constantly, practices relentlessly.

If Arjuna is not with me, I usually slip into the elephant paddock as I return. The mahouts indulge me; I am the only prince to visit them.

On one such occasion, as I finish grooming the little tusker the mahouts have ‘given’ me, I sense someone behind me. I turn around.

Duryodhana is watching me from the massive doorway silently. He is not alone. With him are two others I recognise. Dushasana and Karna.

Dushasana is the second eldest of my cousins, a sad shadow of Duryodhana. Karna, I know of as the son of Adhirtatha, the king’s charioteer.

From afar the son of the charioteer looks a bit like Yudhistira. But my brother would never have the scoff of scorn Karna is wearing now.

I do not want trouble. I step away from the elephant, move towards a side entrance. Footsteps rapidly close behind me. I stop.

“He is running away.” Duryodhana is laughing. “The fat fool is afraid!” Dushasana joins in, an unconvincing echo of his elder brother.

“Look at him shaking,” Karna says. “Is this the one they say will destroy your clan and drink your blood, Duryodhana? This fat fool?”

Fat fool. I am used to that. But somehow those words from Karna anger me more. What right does this charioteer’s son have to call me that?

I will pay him back — but not with words. Duryodhana has taken a fighting stance; I see Dushasana edging sideways. I take a deep breath.

I know what to expect. Duryodhana will lunge, try to grab me in a dueling lock as we have been taught. Dushasana will attack my flank.

I pretend to watch Dushasana, turning slightly. As I see Duryodhana tensing, preparing to rush me, I pivot, kicking out hard at his knees.

Duryodhana falls heavily, yowling in pain. I turn quickly, allowing Dushasana to run into my elbow at the end of his clumsy rush.

As he staggers, I shove him hard, sending him towards Duryodhana. He trips, falls over. I do not let them recover; I cannot afford to.

Slipping behind, I grab their hair. Their heads are slick with oil, but I get a good grip, tug hard. Their heads clash together. I repeat.

Again and again, I tug. They squirm, yell, but I do not stop. Karna has disappeared. Shouts. Running feet. Rough hands wrench me away.

The mahouts surround Duryodhana and Dushasana. There is blood on their heads, on Dushasana’s face. I walk away; I will pay Karna back later.

Much later I approach Mother’s chambers. Yudhistira is there. To my surprise, he embraces me. I embrace him, then touch Mother’s feet.

“Son, why did you attack your cousins?” she asks quietly. I didn’t, I say. She looks at me for a long moment, without a word.

“That charioteer’s son came to complain about you to Grandfather Bhishma,” Yudhistira says. “He said you jumped them from behind.”

They listen to me in silence. “I understand why you fought,” Mother says finally, “but did you have to hurt them so bad?” I have no answer.

Mother pulls me close. “Keep away from those boys, Bhima,” she tells me. “They will try to harm you — and people will always blame you.”

Yudhistira walks me to the door. “Child, Duryodhana will want revenge,” he says, embracing me again. “Be careful. Don’t go out after dark.”

I nod. Fat fool I may be, but I have already figured that out.

Carry on reading at epicretold (and do leave me a note below, what you think of the story so far)

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Field notes on epicretold

Image courtesy: Pratham Books

This is the story: technology student builds concrete canoe, goes out to test in dangerous river, drowns. Just wanted to see if it would float properly, you see.

Ken Kitamura, 19, was not alone in this project. This is how the Japanese Mainichi Daily News reports it

Kitamura, a student at the Osaka Institute of Technology, built the canoe along with other members of the university’s civil engineering culture research club.

And this, the best part:

Kitamura was not wearing a life jacket. Police are continuing to investigate.

Honestly.

I HAVE let another project run wild. Will I ever learn?

A regular work day, and my very literary colleague Bronwen sends across this link. About amateur novels read on mobile phone, apparently a big thing with Japanese teenagers. Nice, I say.

So she sends me two more. The first on New York Times reporter Matt Richtel’s experiment at tweeting a thriller, the second on a determined bunch bending Twitter their way with short fiction.

Most of that — from what I could see at InstantFiction, twae, Maureen, etc — was micro enough to make flash fiction – even drabble — read like a novel. Richtel’s ‘Twiller’ was an exception, but still short enough to be labelled short story.

Question then was, would a full-length work of fiction fly on Twitter? Was there scope for an episodically lengthy narrative on the medium?

This was the time I was devouring my ex-colleague Prem Panicker’s Bhimsen (so far as I know the first attempt at blogging a full-length, *quality* work of fiction post by post), a reimagining of the Mahabharata, along similar lines as M T Vasudevan Nair’s award-winning Randamoozham, published in the south Indian language of Malayalam many years ago (the English version is titled Second Turn). It occurred to me the tale was just perfect for the experiment.

For one, the Mahabharata is the ultimate war story, providing enough ‘conflict’, enough opportunities for dramatic tension at every turn — surely that would help hold the reader? Plus, I have been fascinated with the narrative since I read M T’s wonderfully nuanced interpretation in Randamoozham as a kid. Plus, plus, war narratives — fictional, semi-fictional, factual — are of academic interest to me.

There was also the irony of attempting to fit one of the world’s longest and philosophical epics into a microblogging site meant to keep your friends updated about your non-activities  (‘am in shower. shoot, phone got wet’). (Not to mention the chance to make manly-man Bhima actually ‘tweet’, which appealed greatly to my wicked side.)

And so started this project (this is where you toddle off to twitter.com/epicretold and start following me).

So far everything was sane, under control. But the trouble with putting something out there is that it takes a life of its own. Before I knew it I found myself talking to the Indian media (Mahabharata + New Media = News Value squared), promising things I had never intended to promise.

How many tweets on an average day, ask the Journalist.

Three to four, I commit without hesitation (woh! where did that come from?)

Do you plan to have other sites to help latecomers catch up?

Oh yes, just starting an ‘about to’ page and thinking of having a separate ‘the story so far’ site as well, I say (seriously dude, shut your trap!)

Well, the short version is that I shot my mouth off and received fairly serious media attention (among others, see stories in Time, Reuters, WSJ-Mint, DNA, NPR, Asian Age, India Today, and Express; Reuters interview here). The pressure is on now (the discerning reader might notice that in twitter.com/aboutepicretold, the ‘about to’ page I did start, I have, demonstrating extreme verbal dexterity, managed to stay clear of concrete commitments – but that’s only for your eyes) and I must confess I have no clue where this thing will take me.

What sort of narrative will actually work here? Three ‘episodes’ a day, is that too far and few? Would the reader have forgotten where we stopped by the time s/he receives the next tweet? More worryingly, what worked for Japanese teenagers might not work elsewhere, in a different genre, across a different culture/cultures.

Good news is, this need not ‘work’ to make this work; I need not have a 1,000 followers hanging on to my every tweet (though that would be nice). As someone said to me the other day, the pleasure is in the process — so, I guess, is the learning.

A confession and a caveat, in that order, as I conclude. Many have asked me how much I have written, have I planned it all out? Not. I have not pre-written this, nor have I mind-mapped it much. After some thought, I have decided to see it as it is — fiction to go, written live. I will take my chances with that. I intend to follow Prem’s narrative structure as much as possible (he’s done the hard work, it is only fair I reap the benefits), in places closely (some of his imagery is too good a fit), in places, not.

Which brings me to the caveat. epicretold needs to be seen as an experiment in social media, not in the Mahabharata. It does not capture the philosophical richness of the epic, nor does it purport to have literary merit. It is simply twiction, nothing more.

Excuse me now, I got to go tweet.

ALSO SEE:

The end of childhood: The first 100 tweets on ER

PS: Check out the Facebook group page for epicretold here

Image: Sunil Krishnan

I like the idea far better than the ‘new route’, ‘taught’ PhDs some UK universities now offer. And why not? If a PhD is an ‘original contribution to knowledge’ accessible to scholars around the world, surely publications are a better way of doing that than a conventional thesis, which, very often, dies its life out on dusty academic bookshelves?

Arthur Georges, a professor at the University of Canberra in Australia, makes a case for it:

Publication in peer reviewed journals is the currency of science. Under this model, the arduous task of reorganizing and rewriting the thesis for publication is avoided, and the work is much more likely to see the light of day. There are much tighter constraints on what can and cannot be included in published articles, leading to a more concise thesis, with savings in effort all round. The thesis will be short (less than 200 pages), a blessing to examiners. The standards and expectations for the quality of published work are well-established, universal and unambiguous, enforcing a defacto standard across the sector that is currently lacking. The research itself is likely to be more focused on those activities likely to lead to conclusive and publishable results. And importantly, the candidate will be competitive for postdoctoral fellowships and employment at the time of graduation.

Fair logic, but PhD by publication is not without problems. One issue, as Steve Draper of the Glasgow University points out in this paper, is ‘comparability’. A conventional thesis is fairly standardised. There is a consensus among most universities on how long it should be, what it should contain, how it should be structured, etc. Not so with the publication route. As Draper puts it, there is much “divurgence in regulations” among awarding bodies.

What most universities do agree on are a) submission should contain published work, b) submission should contain a context document to introduce/support/pull together the published work and c) and there be a viva voce to decide on the award.

What universities do not agree on span more areas, mostly the nitty-gritties  (check out the guidelines at Stirling, Edinburgh, and East Anglia). For instance:

How many published pieces would make for a PhD?

Should these be peer-reviewed papers (what would happen if, say, a practioner who has written a how-to book decides to take this route)?

Should the publications be undertaken within a specific timeframe (for instance, during the time the candidate is registered as a doctoral student)?

How long and substantial should the contextual document be?

Issues, yes, but certainly not of depth to undermine the original logic. So why am I still reluctant to climb on to Georges’s – and, as it happens, Draper’s – wagon?

I guess my reservations arise out of a more fundamental – and perhaps old-fashioned – concern. For me a PhD is an exciting journey, undertaken not just to get from point A to point B quickly, but to look around, explore, absorb the landscape, seeing your destination only on the distant horizon; it is a training in not just producing original knowledge, but a test of endurance and ability to persevere with and manage larger projects.

The publication route, I fear, cuts into this. Gone is the romance, the adventure – the destination is too near, the path too flat and straight and blinkered to produce anything but ‘normal science’. As for endurance, this is a collation of short-term efforts, a series of sprints, not a marathon. Which, though impressive and a valid demonstration of academic sportsmanship, is a different kind of training — less foundational, more ephimeral.

Am I being a pedantic, old git? Tell me below.

Illustration courtesy: fotosearch.com