Mayank Chhaya Daily

The heady fragrance of vindication

Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan announcing the release of the captured Indian air force pilot Abhinandan Varthaman in parliament. (Photo: A screen grab from PTV)

This morning I woke up to the news that Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has decided to release the captured Indian Air Force pilot Abhinandan Varthaman as “a peace gesture.”

I am going to pretend without any basis at all that the following  passage from my blog yesterday has had its effect on Khan. After all, the least a journalist can get is some vindication.

"Varthaman has the potential to become a bargaining chip for Pakistan and its new Prime Minister Imran Khan but at the same time it presents Islamabad with a powerful opportunity to calm things down. Khan could unilaterally decide to return the wing commander to India without any conditions to reinforce his rhetoric of wanting genuine peace with India."

There is no next to no chance that anyone in Khan’s orbit read my blog. More to the point, there was nothing even remotely path-breaking about what I had suggested because any reasonable person who likes peace would see every merit in making that gesture. And finally, it is a strategically and diplomatically smart move to order the release without any conditions. Khan has earned some bragging rights even though in the overall scheme of things between India and Pakistan they may not buy much.

Khan may or may not brag about this but I am doing a bit of this today even though, like I said at the outset, I have no basis to other than suggesting something that would have crossed anyone’s mind.

Although tempting in this season of electioneering in India, it would be imprudent, not to mention graceless, for India generally and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party particularly to spin this gesture as an act of submission by a rattled neighbor. It behooves a civilization of India’s greatness to recognize Khan’s gesture for what it is and look for ways to resolve this unnervingly bloody conflict once and for all.

At a news conference in Hanoi, US President Donald Trump spoke about “reasonably attractive news” emanating from the subcontinent.

“We have been involved in trying to help them (India and Pakistan) stop and we have some reasonably decent news,” he said. “I think hopefully that (tensions) could be coming to an end, it has been going on for a long time,” Trump said.

As of this morning here in America, I have not seen any comment from India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Khan’s gesture. It is safe to assume that he would welcome it although a more expeditious response would have been useful.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had said earlier that his government had offered a deal to India to deescalate tensions in exchange for return of Varthaman. He said India rejected the offer and insisted on his release. India is also standing its ground on the resumption of dialogue by demanding that Islamabad take “concrete” steps terrorist outfits operating on its soil before that can happen.

There has been some concern about whether this gesture would weaken Khan’s position domestically with Pakistan’s all-powerful military. I seriously doubt that because I am fairly certain Khan has the military’s concurrence. For the sake of argument, even if he does not it is entirely possible for any one, including a political leader, to evolve and discover new strengths and self-assurance.

It would be interesting to see if Khan chooses to hand over Jaish-e-Mohammad leader Masood Azhar to India or at least severely circumscribes his freedom to an extent that he becomes of no consequence pending legal action against him. After all, he is the cause of the current tensions with one of his supposed followers having carried out a suicide bombing with an explosive-laden vehicle that killed 40 personnel of India’s Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) on February 14.

I am not holding my breath on that happening any time soon.

Day 2 of India-Pakistan tensions

It is in the nature of military triumphs that they are frequently short-lived. After the nationwide celebration/endorsement of India’s air strikes on targets in Pakistan yesterday, the country is confronting that reality.

With Indian Air Force pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman in Pakistan’s custody after his jet was shot down during a dogfight over the border, the thumping triumphalism has become muted. Pictures of his bloodied face have come as a sobering reminder of what any military action can lead to.

Varthaman has the potential to become a bargaining chip for Pakistan and its new Prime Minister Imran Khan but at the same time it presents Islamabad with a powerful opportunity to calm things down. Khan could unilaterally decide to return the wing commander to India without any conditions to reinforce his rhetoric of wanting genuine peace with India.

The shooting down of Varthaman’s fighter jet and his subsequent capture, although part of exigencies that military planners always anticipate, is a clear setback to the otherwise efficient action by India yesterday. One can argue away Varthaman’s capture as an acceptable consequence of any significant military engagement but in the climate of some embarrassing political grandstanding during the run-up to India’s parliamentary elections the plight of a single individual has the power to concentrate and shift the national mood.

It is predictably a tit-for-tat phase between India and Pakistan since the latter also claimed that its air force had struck “non-military targets” in response to India’s strikes. I am not sure what Pakistan means by “non-military targets” unlike India’s matching claim referring to the training facilities of the terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM). Whether or not India actually hit and destroyed JeM targets, its intent was demonstrable. I don’t know what Pakistan was trying to hit inside Kashmir because India has no terrorist training facilities.

India has denied that any targets were hit by Pakistan and instead said it had shot down a Pakistani fighter jet as part of its air defense readiness.

These claims and counterclaims will go on for a while among the two countries' leaderships partly aimed at their own domestic political constituencies.

On a separate note, it never fails to amuse me that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s risible assertions of possessing a “56-inch chest” during the 2014 election campaigning to project a barrel-chested masculinity still remain part of the discourse. In the immediate aftermath of the Indian strikes, some newspapers made metaphorical references to his “56-inch chest” and how he had lived up to its promised masculinity. Of course, there is no relation whatsoever between sheer physical courage by anyone and size of their chest but this ludicrous narrative endures in India’s politics.

There is also some weird transference of valor and glory to Modi personally after the Indian strikes as if he was one of the air force pilots who carried out the strikes himself. Such glorification of a leader on whose watch a successful military action takes place is a common phenomenon around the world. That does not make it any less ridiculous.

There is no way to predict where the current tensions between India and Pakistan might lead to even though the fears of an all-out war are overstated. I seriously doubt if either Modi or Khan wants it to rise to that level. I come back to my point that Khan could make a unilateral gesture by releasing Wing Commander Varthaman unconditionally.

Some general observations about India's Balakot strike

Armchairs across India are engaged in such a frenzied back and forth in the aftermath of the Indian airstrike on a specific target in Pakistan that I can hear them squeak here in Chicago. Every clueless social media warrior has suddenly gained access to some of the most guarded intelligence and tactical planning maps as they go about making such hilariously knowing assertions without ever having set a foot either in Kashmir or a military-intelligence establishment. Credulity is overflowing across the social media India. The reality on the terra firma is bound to be much more nuanced.

I had an indication of an impending airstrike last evening before I went to sleep but also had enough sense not start spouting fake knowledge about the operation which by its very nature would have been and will be known to a very few people in all its complex details. I am as far away from that knowledge as one can be. I have zero idea about the intricacies of the operation and how deep the airstrike went beyond the Line of Control (LoC) or even into the official, undisputed Pakistani territory. However, reading and watching some of the comments/observations/fulminations/triumphalist verbal high-fiving it would seem that almost every social media Indian was inside the situation room where the airstrike was first planned.

All that is being discussed on social media is necessarily third or fourth hand and, in some cases, pulled straight out of an unmentionable orifice. It is a good thing that India’s military establishment has been historically sober, rational and deeply calibrated and is loath to responding to ignorant claims. Having had some measure of its operations in Kashmir for close to a decade between 1989 and 1997 I know that its actions are generally never less than precisely structured and consciously disengaged from any emotional content.

New Delhi has been specific in describing the strike in the early hours of February 26—according some reports 3.30 a.m. local time—as aimed at a non-military target. Its top diplomat, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale called it “non-military preemptive action”, which focused only on a Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorist training facility in a location called Balakot.

“India struck the biggest training camp of JeM in Balakot. In this operation, a very large number of JeM terrorists, trainers, senior commanders and groups of Jihadis who were being trained for Fidayeen action were eliminated,” Gokhale said.  

Which Balakot and how far into Pakistan has quickly become a source of very knowing social media speculation among those whose knowledge of geography is generally very challenged. Gokhale has remained studiedly unspecific as to the specific coordinates of Balakot. It seems there are two Balakots, perhaps spelled somewhat differently. One of them is said to be very close to the working border known as the Line of Control (LoC) and the other some 50 miles or 90 kilometers away and well into Pakistan’s official territory. This is an important question because it goes to the heart of whether India went into the Pakistani territory for the first time since the 1971 war to strike at a target or it destroyed some camps close to the LoC without having to violate the border.

If it is the Balakot in the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, then it constitutes a very significant escalation in India’s willingness to take on the relentless terror attacks, the latest being the one that killed 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel in a car bombing in Pulwama, Kahsmir on February 14. I find it instructive that Gokhale called the strike an intelligence-led operation to make a subtle distinction that it was not necessitated by the thirst for revenge after the Pulwama attack. 

As is always happens between India and Pakistan during such strikes, the claims about how significant was what was destroyed are diametrically opposite. In the Pakistani narrative the strike merely flattened some forest cover and cratered some ground in a useless area near the border. However, as Gokhale explained the damage was specific and significant.

It is not altogether inconceivable that the choice of a Balakot was deliberate given the ambiguity it afforded because there are two of them. This is pure speculation on my part because I have no first, second, third or even the fourth-hand knowledge.

Like I said sitting some 9,000 miles from the action I have zero clue about how significant the strike was but the Indian military is not generally known to engage ridiculous claims over its operations. If it says the strike was a significant, albeit specific, one, then there are very high prospects that it was. Whether a strike like that degrades the enduring terror threat to an unprecedented degree is a matter of debate. What it does do is to put Islamabad in a particular quandary over whether to retaliate or not. If there is retaliation of any significant nature, then it would be tantamount to admitting that the Indian strike was indeed inside its official territory and a big one. If there is no retaliation, then it is the tacit admission of not having the stomach to engage in a matching fashion.

The fact that its default response was to dismiss the Indian claim by showing some flattened trees and cratered ground would suggest there may not be a response. Once again, I have no special insight into the Pakistani thinking merely because I have a functioning brain and fingers. I am watching rather keenly what happens next if anything at all other than some frenzied armchair rocking.

On a tangential note, I was quite amused by how a typical American expression has seeped into South Asian militaryspeak as well. Both India and Pakistan have spoken in terms of responding “at a time and place of our choosing.” This is an expression, which is mostly heard among American politicians and military leaders.

I have always found it superfluous because it goes without saying that we all choose a time and place of our choosing in order convey that we are in full control of our lives which we often are not.

It is not necessary that we comprehend the universe in order to live in it

It is possible that other writers have started their books by writing the last chapter first but I do not know of any personally. So for the limited purposes of this post, I am going to pretend that I am the only one who might have done it.

The book in question is my upcoming one ‘What does Jupiter really do?’ which, as the description on its cover says, is about “A lifelong and futile quest to get a handle on this damn universe.” For some reason, I found it much easier to write the final chapter first because it affords me the luxury of off-the-cuff writing that does not require any research.  

It is more like a philosophical essay on the meaning or the purpose of the universe. I am not saying I found the meaning or the purpose because I was not looking for either. Having engaged with the theme since the age of 13, I have now spent 45 years meditating over it. You will have to read the book to find out what my conclusions about this damn universe are if one can offer conclusions about a seemingly open-ended thermodynamic macroscopic system. There is now a whole new field in physics called quantum thermodynamics that looks at the rules that govern heat and energy at the atomic level. That makes the scope of my quest even more difficult.

Every time I see the emergence of a new field of study in physics, my optimism about ever being able to make some sense out of the universe personally dims considerably. In the interest of clarity, in my book I am not aiming to offer explanations that make sense to anyone other than me. It is strictly my quest based on having read great ideas in physics for over four decades. One enduring quote that is always in my mind came from the Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg who says so memorably in his 1976 book ‘The First Three Minutes’: “The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. ” I read that in 1979/80 when I was 18/19.

In a sense, that observation has been one of the reasons for me to write this rather freewheeling book about the universe. It is my way to elevate my life a little above the level of farce and give it some of the grace of tragedy.

My default response to the universe is to conclude that there is no particular reason to understand the fundamentals of the universe because there is no entity that would tell you that you have finally got to the essence of it all. It is not necessary that we comprehend the universe in order to live in it but it would be intellectually satisfying to know that one at least tried. The human intellectual realm is so minuscule when it comes to traversing even the smallest area of the universe. Unless we become an interstellar civilization, we will continue to speculate about the universe from the surface of Earth. When you consider that out of some 300,000 years that Homo sapiens have been around, perhaps some form of science has existed only for a few thousand years and modern physics for a barely 130 years, in a galactic neighborhood that is 4.6 billion years old you get some measure of the scale.

The best way to get a grasp on the universe for ordinary mortals is to deliberately not think in terms of what might have existed in the early universe—the first three minutes as it were—but what we see and experience in our immediate surrounding. There is no reason to believe that what we see right here on Earth is any less astonishing than what we might find on an exoplanet billions of light years away. Over the weekend, I was watching the BBC’s Planet Earth series yet again and was completely disoriented by the creatures that exist in deep ocean. The same question plagued me as the title of the book but in a variant. “What do these deep ocean creatures really do?” That question can be raised in an infinite number of variants across the universe without seriously hoping to fine one final explanation.

I return to my longstanding view that we all carry own personal universes. As I wrote on November 13, 2014, “I have long been convinced that we all lead a life of reasonable inferences. Over the millennia, humans have accumulated a set of large but finite number of inferences. These inferences often fit the observable reality or at any rate, what we call real. One of my own current favorite views about the universe is that we all carry our own little universes in our heads. When my universe converges with yours, we have a happy, friendly exchange. When our universes diverge, we have an argument that may be often unpleasant and, in some cases, even violent.”

Obsessing over Simi's 1968 look

 

Since yesterday, I have been obsessing over Hindi cinema star Simi Garewal’s particular look in the 1968 movie ‘Saathi’. She was 23 then.

In a song from the film ‘Yeh kaun aaya roshan ho gayi’ Simi, is dressed in a gorgeous ivory-white and ocher silk sari with a matching blouse. I suspect she was wearing the famous Kanjeevaram silk.

Simi looked sensational. These days my response to a woman looking sensational is to paint her. Since painting likenesses is not my strong suit I have focused on Simi’s sartorial and body language aspects. In any case, given my limitations, I did not set out to paint the woman in my work like her but merely someone somewhat reminiscent of her.

I am reasonably happy with the result which should suffice as my Sunday morning offering.

Ricky Gervais and 'After Life'

Ricky Gervais in Netflix original series 'After Life'

Warning: The language here is brutally crude and unacceptable in many a social milieu.

Watching the trailer of Rick Gervais’s new Netflix series ‘After Life’ my faith in inventive profanity stands even more reinforced. Not that I needed any external convincing that inventive invective is a disregarded form of literature but it is good to know anyway.

‘After Life’, as described in its synopsis, is this: “Struggling to come to terms with his wife's death, a writer for a newspaper adopts a gruff new persona in an effort to push away those trying to help.” For me it was enough that Gervais’s character Tony is a newspaper writer—for The Tambury Gazette—even  though it is, as he says, a free local newspaper that no one cares about. Anything about a newspaper or a print journalist and I am in.

Two scenes caught my particular attention and both contain extremely unvarnished language that only the Brits could carry off with élan. In one scene, a somewhat chubby school boy calls Tony a “pedo” to which Gervais’s character responds with ferocious invectitude. (Invectitude is not a word but I coined it because it sounds like it could and should be. It describes someone with attitude full of invective.)

““I am not a pedo, and if I was you’d be safe, you tubby little ginger cunt,” Tony tells the boy and walks off. Even watching it alone at 6.30 a.m. in my home office, I could hear a wave of wincing.

In another scene, a particularly hirsute man tells Gervais that his dog should be on leash, to which the latter describes him as “a hairy, nosy, cocksucker.”

Lest you think that ‘After Life’ is all inevctitude of a recently bereaved man, you would be wrong because it comes across as a rather insightful look at grief.

It releases on Netflix on March 8 and I plan to finish watching it that very day.

On a separate note, I find it remarkable that Gervais always plays Gervais irrespective of what character he is supposed play in any project. It takes a particular kind of professional self-assurance to do that successfully. 

Like a shy girl, Hesitant in her steps, But her eyes glinting...

Let's go with this today.

कुछ सुबह ऐसी होती है

जब मायूसी के अब्रों के पीछे

उम्मीद की रौशनी होती है

जो निकलती है

एक लजीली बच्ची की तरह

थोड़ी सी हिचकिचाहट

अपने क़दमों में मगर

आँखों में दमकता नूर

और उभरता आशाओं का

एक उजला समंदर

--मयंक छाया

And here is its free translation.

There are some mornings

When behind the clouds of despair

Lurks the light of hope

That comes out

Like a shy girl

Hesitant in her steps

But her eyes glinting

With a rising tide of

A resplendent ocean  

--MC

For those who may not read Hindi but could but understand it and be interested in the phonetics of the poem:

Kuchh subah aisi hoti hai

Jab mayusi ke abron ke peeche

Ummeed ki roshni hoti hai

Jo nikalti hai

Ek lajili bachchi ki tarah

Thodi si hichkichahat

Apne kadmon mein magar

Ankhon mein damakta noor

Aur ubharta aashaon ka

Ek ujla samandar

 

Dr. Swaroop Rawal among ten finalists for $1 million Global Teacher prize

Dr. Swaroop Rawal

Dear friend and actress-turned-teacher Dr Swaroop Rawal née Sampat is one of the ten finalists for the $1 million Global Teacher Prize, whose winner will be announced on March 24 in Dubai. Instituted by the  Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize, the ten finalists for 2019 have been chosen from 10,000 nominations from 179 countries. It is remarkable enough for Swaroop to be one of the ten from the 10,000, it is entirely possible that she might just bag the big one.

I have known Swaroop for close to 35 years as a particularly sharp and substantive mind. In the run-up to the prize, I republish a story I did about her for The Indian Diaspora on August 30, 2016.

Nearly 33 years ago while she rode a wave of extraordinary popularity as a television star 26-year-old Swaroop Sampat frequently spoke of drama as a tool of education. For a former Miss India (1979), who appeared set for a definite movie career, Swaroop came across as someone who could break the mould any moment and pursue something entirely different. Today, children's books authored by her has been accepted by Australia's school system.

In fact, she would often joke that a doctorate in education was not as improbable for her as her turn as a studiedly ditzy Renu Verma on the hit series ‘Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi’ might suggest.

That was 1984. In 2016, she holds a doctorate on the theme how to employ drama in school education. Marriage to the well-known actor Paresh Rawal and two grown up sons later, Dr. Rawal is now fully focused on her main passion - drama as a tool to transform school education. As part of her doctoral work, she demonstrated “how to use drama as an educational tool to enhance emotional understanding, understanding self, empathetic understanding and creativity in children with special learning disability in a school in Mumbai.”

Her latest project, though not necessarily an offshoot, is a continuation of her work in education. It is a set of six children’s books, meant for the fourth and fifth grade levels by her along with her son Aditya has been accepted by the Australian Quality Education Programme. The books address themes of children’s rights as enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in a manner that fresh minds can internalize them without being preached.

Dr. Rawal told The Indian Diaspora, “The purpose of the books is to gently introduce children at the fourth and fifth grade levels to the idea of respectful behaviour and standing up for what is right.”

“I think child rights education is an important facet we are missing out on. For example, it is vital to note only in the last century that gender equality as a concept has been introduced into our educational lexicon as it exists in Article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child or CRC,” she added.

Colourfully illustrated by Suman S. Roy and written by Dr. Rawal with significant inputs from her son Aditya the books are making their way to Australia even before they find traction in India. They have also been endorsed by Save the Children-India-International, which is affiliated to Save the Children-International. Fiji is also considering the books, Dr. Rawal said.

In India, the books are being reviewed by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR). Once approved Dr. Rawal and her publishers plan to have it translated in all major Indian languages.

The books address a diversity of challenges that children in the demographic face. From the problem of bullying at school to how diverse and yet unique Nature is, Dr. Rawal weaves in ideas in a way that appeals to her reader demographic.

The child protagonists in the books, Krish and Tara, often counter their parents and other adult family members with sound logic when it comes to issues such as which sport to play. Swaroop also throws in occasional correctives with older brother Krish helping younger sibling Tara in her pronunciations.

It is always a challenge to keep children at that age engaged, informed and entertained but Dr. Rawal’s stories do an effective job of creating a world they are so familiar with.

In a story titled ‘The New Boy in Class’, a character called Samir is introduced who is autistic. While most people at school are mean and unfriendly to him Tara and Krish go out of their way to make him feel comfortable.

In a passage about Samir’s autism, the particular book explains, “Actually, Krish had a plan. He had learnt from class teacher that Samir was an autistic child. That is why he seemed to be different. Children with autism are different from others, but so is every single person in this world. Just because Samir is out of the ordinary,it does not mean he is silly. It just means that he is different. Autism is something that people are born with. Having autism means that Samir’s brain is wired in another way. Still Samir’s brain works perfectly well. It just does things differently from other people’s brains. That is what makes him distinctive.”

In another book titled ‘The Six Stars Club’ children form a club that includes two former bullies Nikhil and Roy as well as Samir. The idea is to introduce a sense of common purpose and inclusiveness.

These are simple books that unobtrusively familiarize children of a certain age group with themes that will stand them in good stead throughout their lives. Each book carries details about the UNCRC and a note from Thomas Chandy, CEO of Save the Children India where he points out how Dr. Rawal has woven in the rights of children as part of the stories. Perhaps at a time when the adult world has become so fractious and judgmental, it makes sense to reclaim some of the lost ground of decency via children.

The kissing sailor

For as long as I have known the iconic 1945 photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse to celebrate the end of World War II I have seriously wondered about consent. I first saw the photograph by the Life magazine photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt in my teens. By that time the picture had been world famous for a good 30 years. It has remained so after 74 years.

It came under renewed focus with the death of George Mendonsa, the sailor most likely in it, at age 95. The nurse in the picture was identified as Greta Zimmer Friedman. Mendosa’s death prompted me to quickly paint the remarkable picture. Even when I was painting it, the thought of whether the kiss would be denounced as an assault in today #MeToo era troubled me. I had a vague recollection that it was a random kiss by a jubilant sailor basking in the glory of the Allied victory.

As The Guardian notes, Friedman “had spoken of her shock at being grabbed and kissed by Mendonsa, who was drunk, amid exuberant scenes in Times Square after the surrender of Japan.”

“So we get into Times Square and the war ends and I see the nurse,” Mendonsa told CNN in 2015 of the moment that was captured by Alfred Eisenstaedt. “I had a few drinks, and it was just plain instinct, I guess. I just grabbed her.”

Both the involved parties have spoken about Mendosa “grabbing” Friedman which should be clearly problematic at any time irrespective of the prevailing sociocultural milieu, particularly now in the context of the #MeToo movement.

Friedman had told The New York Times in 2005 that the kiss was not consensual with her son later saying she did not view it negatively.

A statue depicting the kiss was vandalized yesterday with #MeToo scrawled in red on the woman’s leg.

I must admit to being hesitant in painting the photograph but did so after discovering Friedman may not have made much of it even though she clearly did not consent to it.

As I mentioned, this was a quick job for me. It took me about five minutes because of the inherent movement and angles in the picture. My painting is more a tribute to Eisenstaedt than anything else. The painting appears to have been liked by many. Hence this post.

Joys and challenges of self-publishing

Since book royalties are one of the key components of my survival, I do regularly track the progress of my biography ‘Dalai Lama: The Dénouement’ released on February 1 on Amazon.

Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) keeps a meticulous record of the number of copies sold and royalties earned that the author can access at any time on an impulse. This is one feature that separates KDP from the traditional publishers who tend to send sale/royalty statements every few months. I could have easily taken the  traditional publishing route the way I did with considerable success when the original edition of this book was published in 2007, first by Doubleday/Random House, as ‘Dalai Lama: Man, Monk, Mystic” and then by more than 20 publishers worldwide.

Now that the rights to the book having been reverted to me, I can do what I want with it in terms of its content, design, distribution and so on. Of course, I get no advance against royalties the way I did with the traditional publishing. There is always a trade-off. Life is a trade-off.

Coming back to the current book, in the past 19 days since its publication, it has sold five copies. That is almost a copy sold every four days. Is that good? Who knows? I am just stating facts as they are without editorializing them even though perhaps I should.

I am in the process of mounting a publicity campaign for the new version which has four new chapters adding up to 20,000 words, including a detailed conversation with the Dalai Lama. This is apart from the many I had for the original version.

The problem with self-publishing a title’s new version, even if it was first published by top of the line publishers, is that it takes much longer for the media to take note. This is notwithstanding that I have been a journalist for the past 38 years and know a lot of fellow journalists who would consider reviewing it. The only way a self-published title can get traction in the media is through its sales. Therefore, my sense of urgency to see how it is moving. So far so meh. However, I will change that soon.