The Young 'Uns Are Doing Fine

Recently, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP, or the National Institute of Language and Literature) announced its concerns about the influence of indie works on young writers.

From the short report, I'm guessing the organisation is frowning - again - on street Malay and envelope-pushing stuff that often appear in such works. The statements were made during a literary event, so it looks like another appeal to nostalgia.

In a Facebook post, Silverfish Books wondered what took DBP so long to wake up to the reality. Not of the "dangers" of indie works, but that its role as trendsetter and promoter of Malaysian literature has seemingly been usurped by these rebel upstart outfits.

Nature (and literature) abhors a vacuum. Yes, many have complained about the (often crude) language and poor editing in the indie publications.

Well, that didn't stop the current surge of popularity of indie material. And the coarseness of one's tongue (or pen) may not reflect one's character.

Like some, I feel that, as a defender and developer of language and literature, DBP dropped the ball years ago. Its presence in bookstores seems to have ebbed as well. "Where are the DBP books in Malaysian bookshops (apart from the dictionary)?" asked Silverfish.

Also interesting is Silverfish's statement that DBP publishes books "to fulfil KPIs; not sell them." If that's the reason books are being published, it's not even a business. Assuming there's useful content in these publications, how is it going to reach the public without efforts in marketing? Books don't sell themselves.

Indie lit is growing, and its purveyors are making strides across the publishing industry and connecting with their readership like I've never seen before. It's all peer-to-peer and so, so warm and energetic, unlike how the elders at some institutions talk down to others at the foot of their ivory towers.

The nimble young 'uns are getting around limitations imposed by governments, institutions and firms. With a bit of luck, it'll be the millennials and their street Malay that will make the national language more global.

The latest and perhaps the loudest shot from across the bow is the news that several indie outfits have helped set up a country booth for Malaysia at this year's London Book Fair. And these were among those tarred by the National Civics Bureau as masterminds of an anti-establishment movement.

According to the report, "the Malaysian booth is entirely self-funded: Buku Fixi, DuBook Press, the Yusof Gajah Lingard Literary Agency and Clarity Publishing are doing this without any help from the public or private sector." The set-up and other related costs is over RM100,000 - a fraction of the allocations for some government projects. I found the possible reasons for the official bodies' "lukewarm" response to collaborate in the LBF quite telling.

(Here's what some of the indie publishers have to say about the establishment. Still an interesting read.)

I was tickled by Silverfish's challenge to DBP; I thought it had Dewan's back to the wall. "...are you going to compete with them (you are a big organisation with almost infinite funds), or sit around and whine? Or use your muscle and 'ban' them? The last would be easy. After all, it is quickly becoming the Malaysian way.

"Or, God forbid, work with the indies?"

Rather than waste energy on "Malaysian ways" or wheezing "not our culture" (as if culture never evolved), the old fogeys might as well try to keep up, or just watch the kids do their thing from the sidelines if they don't want to help out.

Carnage And Calamity: Inspector Singh In Beijing

I'd read this novel during the Chinese New Year break. Months ago, I'd gone into the A Curious Indian Cadaver, which was published earlier, but I got this one out instead, veering dangerously close to China-bashing. Though China could, I suppose, be held responsible for some of the outrageous things it has been linked with, from disappearing booksellers to prawn-pillaging tourists, and the goings-on at the South China Sea.

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Carnage and calamity: Inspector Singh in Beijing

first published in The Malay Mail Online, 29 March 2016


Shamini Flint does not like China.

That's what I could gather from Inspector Singh Investigates: A Calamitous Chinese Killing. This instalment in Flint's Inspector Singh series sees the character looking into the death of a young Singaporean, seemingly from a botched robbery, in the Middle Kingdom.

Through the dead youth — Justin Tan, the son of the First Secretary of the Singapore Embassy there — we are introduced to modern-day China, and the emptying of the famed hutongs of Beijing, driven by development and greed, and enabled by corruption and class disparities. It is soon clear that the victim's end is tied to the land grab.

The good inspector's circumstances haven't changed much, six books into this series and counting. Despite his successes as Singapore's globetrotting gumshoe and growing reputation, he still gets no respect at home. His wife still nags him, and his superior can't stand him. One suspects that Singh was shipped to China with the hope that it'll be a one-way trip.

In keeping with the novel's vibe, Mrs Singh raves about the expendability of anything "Made in China" and the influx of Mainlanders into the island republic.

"Up to no good until proven otherwise!" she says, echoing the sentiments of a neighbour about the gold-digging China dolls said to be infiltrating the Lion City. Which is also what some governments might feel about non-conformists.

Maybe it's not just China that Flint dislikes.

This novel isn't short of villains: corrupt businessmen, corrupt cops, heavy-handed members of the security forces, and even one of China's spoiled-rotten princelings. But the identity of the actual big bad — the country itself, one is led to believe — is always in sight.

Other victims abound as well. Dreaming of a better life, a factory girl plots a get-rich scheme with what she witnesses at a crime scene, potentially dicing with death. Professor Luo, Justin's mentor, is arrested for practising falun gong in public and incarcerated. The professor's daughter (and Justin's girlfriend) fends off the unwanted advances of the aforementioned princeling, who can't seem to tell the difference between loving and owning someone.

But all that is nothing compared to how a prisoner's organs are harvested and for whom — spine-chillingly horrid and infuriatingly unjust.

The perfect backdrop for a calamitous killing.

Though I find it odd that a Singaporean policeman can be sent off, seemingly at a moment's notice, to solve a crime involving Singaporean citizens abroad, even if certain strings were pulled.

It's been a while since I last caught up with Inspector Singh; the other one I read was about "a curious Indian cadaver." By now, I've come to accept that Flint's are a different kind of detective story, where the pieces of the puzzle come together slowly towards the end, with few clues as to the identity of the culprit. You don't get the sense that Singh is driving the story, but I suppose it works here.

Singh tends to think his way through a case (not hoping for action-hero acrobatics with his size), letting other able-bodied sidekicks and allies pick up the slack. In this case, it's a former police officer assigned to him, probably in a dual role as cultural attache to keep the portly Singh from stepping on too many toes.

One gets just enough of everything: detective work, scenery, socio-political commentary and the occasional quote and flash of wit that convinces one that this is a crime novel and not a laundry list of things in China that need fixing.

Still, I couldn't help picking up on the disdain for the unsavoury aspects of modern China sprinkled throughout the book. Maybe it's because I share some of those sentiments.

Or, in Flint's case, maybe it's a case of "we hate the things we love." One can't help but wonder whether, deep down, she is railing against the injustices depicted in her books with the nanoscopic hope that she might in some way get people thinking, and then moving, to start changing things for the better.

Just as her obese, unloved crime-solver tries to do the right thing, despite his own doubts and the odds stacked against him.


Inspector Singh Investigates: A Frightfully English Execution, the newest in Shamini Flint's Inspector Singh series, will be released in April 2016.

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A Calamitous Chinese Killing

Shamini Flint
Piatkus (2013)
309 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-7499-5779-7

Book Marks: Eka's Kurniawan's Wound, Self-Publishing, And Jalan-Jalan

Eka Kurniawan has won the inaugural World Readers Award with Beauty is a Wound.

The award, "organised by the Hong Kong and Australia-based Asia Pacific Writers and Translators association, was given out in Hong Kong." Kudos was also given to the translator for her work on the Indonesian original, Cantik Itu Luka.

Before receiving the grant to publish the book from the Yogyakarta Cultural Academy, Eka had offered Cantik Itu Luka to four publishers, but to no avail.

"A major publisher included a note [with the rejection letter], saying 'the novel is too literary'. I have no idea whether that's a compliment or something else," he recalls, laughing.

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"Self-publishing? It generates a lot of noise on social media. It results in many flashy-looking websites from authorpreneurs keen to sell success secrets to other aspiring authorpreneurs. With Amazon's Kindle and CreateSpace as the major outlets, it continues to put money in the coffers of the company largely responsible for destroying author incomes in the first place. But it isn't a route to financial security. For those who prefer orchestrated backing to blowing their own trumpet, who'd privilege running a narrative scenario over running a small business, who'd rather write adventures than adverts, self-publishing is not the answer."

I'm still trying to decide whether the writer of this piece is for or against self-publishing.


Meanwhile:

• In The Guardian, the interesting story of Mike Stoner's self-published novel, Jalan-Jalan, a tale about "a heartbroken young Brit through Indonesia, where he finds himself embroiled in a murky world at the bottom of the expat barrel after accepting a teaching job at a dodgy language school after a five-minute telephone interview."
• Parnassus Books is now mobile. Bookmobile, that is. "The bright blue bookmobile, which hit the road this week, is a roving offshoot of Parnassus Books, a popular independent bookstore ... co-owned by Karen Hayes and the novelist Ann Patchett," wrote The New York Times/ "The store’s name comes from Christopher Morley’s 1917 novel Parnassus on Wheels, about a middle-aged woman who travels around selling books out of a horse-drawn van."
• Bloggers and social media people in Singapore now have to pay tax for freebies they receive. According to the report, "The rule applies to not only blogging website but social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the likes. Payments are taxable regardless whether they are received directly from the advertisers, or indirectly through a social media influencer companies."
• Sabah-based artist Tina Rimmer launched her memoir, A Life on Two Islands "The memoir tells the story of Tina's life in the United Kingdom and British North Borneo where she arrived in 1949 as the Colony's first female education officer," according to The Borneo Post. Sounds like a good read.
• RIP Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall, and Barry Hines, author of A Kestrel for a Knave. Still a bad year for the arts.

The "First Time"? Maybe Not

This year, a couple of local (Malaysian) novels were nominated for the 2016 Dublin International Literary Awards (DILA, formerly the Dublin IMPAC International Literary Awards): Tree of Sorrow, by Malim Ghazoli PK and The Michelangelo Code by Nazehran Jose Ahmad. Both, I understand, are English translations of the originals in Malay.

An official from the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (National Institute of Language and Literature), told The Malay Mail Online that "both the novels were nominated by the Malaysian National Library and that this is the first time that local novels have been included for the awards."

Well... if they're the first local novels included for the awards after the name change in November 2015, yes. If the DILA is a new award that's different from the Dublin IMPAC, with different criteria and categories, yes.

But it doesn't look that way. For one, why are the previous longlists still archived?

A search shows that in 2015, John Solomon and The Fifth Island (Samuill Tiew/Monopoly Publications) was longlisted; and in 2013, DUKE (Rozlan Mohd Noor/Silverfish) and The Dulang Washer (Paul Callan/MPH Group Publishing) got in. These were published by Malaysian publishers and also nominated by the National Library of Malaysia. Aren't these local titles?

Also: two titles by Khoo Kheng-Hor: Taikor (2006) and Sifu (2011). I think these were published by Pelanduk. Tunku Halim's Dark Demon Rising made it as early as 1999. Aren't these local too?

So I don't think it is the first time local novels have been included for the awards. Was someone misquoted? Did someone transcribe something wrongly? Or has somebody not been doing homework?

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As it turned out, IMPAC, the American company that jointly sponsors the award with the Dublin City Council, had apparently gone defunct in the late-2000s and the trust fund that supports the award had been wound up. The 2015 prize was entirely funded by the Dublin City Council while a new sponsor was being sought.

One of the councillors, Mannix Flynn, suggested the name of the title be changed to relect the departure of IMPAC as a sponsor. From the Irish Times:

"It should be called the Dublin City Council City of Literature award or at least it should denote that the city backs the award [FINANCIALLY]," he said, adding the money might alternatively be spent in other areas.

"There is absolutely no sign of a [NEW]sponsor whatsoever on this. It's a grandiose gesture when you have a city that is suffering from great austerity and the vast majority of artists are living well below the poverty line."

So it's now the DILA, minus the IMPAC. It's kind of like how the Orange Prize for Fiction became the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, when Bailey's (yes, that Irish Cream one) stepped up after the telco firm Orange withdrew.

But if Councillor Flynn is correct about Dublin's situation, the future of the award, once described as "the most eclectic and unpredictable of the literary world's annual gongs", looks bleak without backers. How long can Dublin's city council be able to keep the award going by itself?

Unfair as it may sound, many prizes and awards in the arts are propped up by private sponsors. The implications of this - and the question of what makes somebody's work "world-renowned" and whether this needs to be redefined - is probably better explored in another post or forum, if it isn't already.

Book Marks: Newton, Apple, And Tweeting To Sell Books

Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica, "arguably the most important scientific work ever published", was almost scuppered by a book about fish. Imagine that.

So the story goes that not only Newton was afraid of being criticised for the stuff in Principia, the Royal Society also refused to fund the book because it nearly bankrupted itself, publishing something called The History of Fish.

And it was astronomer Edmund Halley who stepped in - a couple of times - to ensure the publication of "the revolutionary work – which proved mathematically that the same set of laws govern everything in the universe, from small objects to the Earth".

Unfortunately for Halley: "After the publication of Principia, the Royal Society informed Halley it could no longer afford his annual £50 salary, and instead paid him with left over copies of 'The History of Fish.'"

Oh yes, The Telegraph brought us this interesting titbit to tell us that an exhibition at Cambridge University - Lines of Thought: Discoveries that Changed the World - is now open to the public and runs until September 30, in conjunction with Cambridge's 600th anniversary. Do drop by if you're in the neighbourhood.

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Apple owes as much as US$450m for conspiring with five publishers to raise the price of e-books years ago, in response to Amazon's book-pricing policies. Most of the money will go to those who bought books between April 2010 and May 2012 as reimbursements for the higher prices they had to pay.

I'd been following this saga for a while because I'd thought it would have some bearing on how we read, buy and price books in the long run, Yet, it's 2016 and I still prefer physical books and can't find an e-reader I like or can afford. But it seems unceremonious to drop this apple without some acknowledgement.

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Here's an interesting story about a "Twitter book hustler". Shea Serrano used the social media platform to make a book viral, including his own. So apparently, it's all because he's "real". "His tweets give off a dude-down-the-street vibe that seems to resonate with his followers," the Marketplace article goes.

Serrano's editor also said his way of communicating with his fans "feel like he made them a part of something, and they are a part of something." Doesn't this sound like how some indie publishers network with their followers?

On a related note: at a tiny gathering of aspiring writers, literary agent Jan Kardys spoke about, among other things, "the need to focus on creating public platforms and using social media to spread the word about themselves and their work". She also stated that publishers these days "want authors to prepare an advertising campaign" before reaching out to them.

Of course, she also suggested getting the help of a lit agent, but stressed that "It's not the job of an agent to teach you how to write."

She suggested connecting with people who would promise to be 'brutally honest' in their evaluations of the work.

Kardys didn't promise that it would be easy.

"You have to get your book in great shape," she said.

Elsewhere:

• Shutters are coming down on the long-running book blog Bookslut. So far no reason has been given for the impending closure.
• RIP Anita Brookner, whose novel Hotel du Lac won the 1984 Booker Prize for fiction.
• Have a gander at this review of The Gun by Fuminori Nakamura, "a taut tale about a university student's obsession with a pistol in a country where private ownership of firearms is virtually unknown." Will we see more translations of Japanese crime fiction?
• "What is the point of critics?" New York Times film critic A.O. Scott makes his case for criticism in his book, Better Living Through Criticism (I mentioned it here somewhere). The piece in The Guardian includes some views from other critics.
• "I would like to set fire to the term 'serious reader' and throw its ashes into the sea." Over at Book Riot, Maddie Rodriguez makes the case against the "serious reader" and suggests some other types of readers we can be.
• Who is Elena Ferrante? The guessing game goes on as writer Marcella Marmo, professor of contemporary history at the University of Naples Federico II, is forced to deny she is the mystery pseudonym known for a series of acclaimed Neapolitan novels, as claimed by a peer.
• "We Israelis tend to forget that we are a nation of refugees." Israeli novelist, screenwriter and psychologist Ayelet Gundar-Goshen is interviewed at The Guardian for her novel, Waking Lions. Despite her objections to some of the things her country is doing, she's not ready to pack up and go. "I think that to really love your country is to stand there and to fight when you think what it's doing is wrong."

Rediscover Kuala Lumpur with POSKOD.MY

Get the low-down on another side of Malaysia's capital city in Stories from the City: Rediscovering Kuala Lumpur, a collection of articles from online magazine POSKOD.MY, edited by Ling Low and Dhabitah Zainal of POSKOD.MY and published by MPH Group Publishing.

Stories from the City, a compilation of selected Kuala Lumpur-centric
articles from online magazine POSKOD.MY

How is the Coliseum, KL's oldest cinema, still in business? Can you make a living from hunting ghosts? Where do migrant workers (from Myanmar, for instance) go for a taste of home?

Find the answers to these mysteries and more. Get off the beaten path and rediscover the city with those who know it best. From makcik traders to hip-hop stars, cosplay fans to urban farmers, meet the people who are the beating heart of the city.

"When we visit a place as tourists, we look for the obvious monuments, the postcard icons marked as ‘unmissable'," writes Low, the outgoing editor of POSKOD.MY. "But often, it's the smaller details that stay with us: the smell of the subway, perhaps, or the toothy smile of a fruit seller. If someone is rude or polite to us, it sticks more vividly than the most impressive scenery."

Hence, from 2012 to 2015, "POSKOD.MY has made it a mission to rediscover Kuala Lumpur," Low states. "We wanted to ask questions about the city, to unravel its daily mysteries, from the mundane to the profound. What happened to Sungai Buloh's leper colony, once the largest in the Commonwealth? Who is the woman who runs the hidden bakso soup stall in Kampung Baru? Can you make a living from hunting ghosts?"

The mission was undertaken with some urgency, as parts of the city, mostly the historic and rural holdouts underneath the towering spires of modernity, are being eclipsed by development.

"Every day, a new high-rise building would go up and a few more bricks of history would be lost," says Low. "As I write, well-loved kopitiams are replaced with hotels and public parks razed to make way for towers."

It's not just these enclaves that are disappearing, but also the people who are the life of these places – and the custodian of their histories.

"KL is a city obsessed with renewal," Low says. "We are rarely encouraged to look back. Yet, as more communities fight to keep a piece of their heritage alive, the past becomes ever more compelling. To live here is to live with a constant sense of loss.

"But this is the silver lining: with each change, people adapt. When I look at the articles in this book, the common thread is resilience. It’s the people who work in grey areas; the people who transform abandoned spaces; the people who reinvent the city by necessity."

Indeed, the stories of those featured in this book serves up a compelling smorgasbord of the kind of things that make up the character of KL - the Big Durian, if you will, that is home to the locals and those who have ventured here to find something better.

"It's the people who make the city tick," says Low. "But you have to spend time with them and listen to them. This book is a start, but it's simply a drop in a wide, muddy confluence."


Stories from the City: Rediscovering Kuala Lumpur is available at all good bookstores. And apologies for extracting so much from the intro written by Low. She's so quotable in this book.

I know I said I didn't want to do any more "previews" of the company's products, but something about this one compelled me to come out of retirement. Maybe I'll just choose what I want to feature - tengok anginlah.

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Stories from the City

Rediscovering Kuala Lumpur - Selected Stories from POSKOD.MY

edited by Ling Low and Dhabitah Zainal
MPH Group Publishing (January 2015)
148 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-967-415-339-7

Buy from MPHOnline.com

Book Marks: MH370, Scripture, And Putting One's Foot Down

Perhaps reacting to an event called "Let's Read the Quran", the Home Ministry stated that it is a crime to publish or read the Quran in languages without the accompanying Arabic.

(Well, it's book-related, isn't it?)

The chairman of the Home Ministry's Al-Quran Printing, Control and Licensing Board also said that "Translations of the Quran without the Arabic text are prohibited and it is feared that they may be misunderstood and that spiritual rewards cannot be gained by reading them."

Uhm ... interesting. Has the Home Ministry also heard about The Study Quran? If they have, then I suppose we won't have troublesome belated bannings of this book because we're not getting it anyway.

I don't think I'm qualified to comment, so I'll just leave a couple of opinion pieces on the matter by social activist Azrul Mohd Khalib and Malay Mail Online journalist Zurairi AR here.

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A marketer created a fake best-seller by "putting his foot down" - and got a real book deal. Brent Underwood "uploaded a satirical book and turned it into a 'No. 1 best seller' ... to reveal how hollow the claim 'best seller' is by 90 percent of all the gurus and experts)," according to Ryan Holiday in Observer.com.

Underwood's stunt seemed to be a protest of sorts against "all sorts of cringy infomercial-like sites that promise secrets, hacks, summits and webinars to make you an overnight 'best seller.' I found that, more often than not, the people running these sites have no clue when it comes to creating or marketing books. Because they know they can crank out a best seller by way of gimmicks, they do it, and they prey on an aspiring author's desires for status and success."

It's an interesting interview. Speaking of such...

Anybody know Steve Alten? Well, seems the the guy who wrote novels about a kind of "dinosaur shark" recently chummed the writerly waters by dipping his toes into book publishing. Author Chuck Wendig was among a few who had a look at the pay-to-publish service and thinks, well, "you shouldn’t pay anything to get published." But Wendig might have tripped a nerve when he stated that "It smacks of a vanity press."

Alten has responded to Wendig's post several times, but many of the other commenters are, for clear reasons, firmly on Wendig's side of the fence.

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It's been two years since Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370. Prior to this, many news agencies have released commemorative features and op-eds. But a new book on the mystery plane?

So, CNN's "aviation correspondent" (is there such a thing?) Richard Quest has come up with a book, which, according to The Daily Beast, "shines less light on the mystery of MH370 and more on CNN."

The Vanishing of Flight MH370 pretty much chronicles how the 24-hour news network went "all in" - seemingly building a weeks-long media circus around the tragedy to boost ratings. Some of those antics can be seen here in this Daily Show segment.

And in that clip, Quest himself (looked like him, anyway), prompted by a featured tweet, suggested employing PSYCHICS to help find the plane. "It sounds incredible, but they have been used before." Stewart then sarcastically recommended the services of Paul the Octopus. Or did they forget about the bomoh and his coconuts?


Also:

• In this Q&A with Tom Bissell, author of Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve, he speaks to National Geographic about whether Christ's twelve apostles were real(!). "There was probably a Peter and a John, definitely a James (the brother of Jesus), and probably a Thomas. Beyond that, there's nothing historical that verifies their existence other than the gospels themselves. So I think they're a mixture of fact and fiction."
• "Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing." Italian author Elena Ferrante (a pseudonym) is interviewed in The Guardian. Would this work here?
• Singapore-based publisher Epigram Books is in the running for the Bologna Prize for Best Children's Publisher of the Year. Congrats!
• The self-published The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers makes the Baileys prize longlist, along with works by Kate Atkinson, Geraldine Brooks and Anne Enright.
• "Some of these diets are really just political (or religious) manifestos with the word 'diet' stuck on them," argues Carrie Arnold in The Daily Beast. "Many people turn to diet books when they need to shed some weight. If that's their goal, they should probably look elsewhere."
• These thirteen "self-published books you won't find at a book store" sound interesting.

Back To Mobile Computing, Sort Of

And it's the Asus X453S, probably among the cheapest models in its range. This was an impulse buy after the desktop unit finally went bust after almost five years of excellent service.

Despite being warned that its lifespan and that of its ilk won't exceed three years (it only has a one-year warranty), I picked it up. Turned out I needed a PC in the house after all.

(Apologies to all those who warned me against budget laptops. They will probably be proven right.)

It runs Windows 10, and some of the grouses circling online about it seem warranted, such as updates in the background without notice - not to mention Asus-installed bloatware - and the machine is slower performance than its predecessor. Getting it primed and scrubbed for use was nerve-wracking.

If this is the future of computing, it looks pretty bleak to me.

I don't even plan to take it out of the house much. Which means I might return to static (as opposed to mobile) computing at some point.

Though I managed to find a USB 2.0 hub that allows me to use the mouse (I never am a touchpad person) and the modem, freeing the lone USB 3.0 for external drives, the design is such that I can only use, maybe, two ports at a time because the ports are so close together.

At least I have a PC. And I plan to make it pay for itself. Write, write.

Book Marks: Copyrights For Compilations, Etc

A piece on issues of joint authorship and copyright with regards to The Diary of Anne Frank. Owners of the book's copyright contend that Anne Frank's father Otto was a co-author (he wrote parts of the book) and, thus, the copyright should completely expire 50 years after Otto's death.

What caught my eye is this bit in the New Zealand Herald, which has ramifications for Malaysia as well: "Under the TPPA, we [in New Zealand] will have to extend the duration of copyright for literary works from 50 to 70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the author dies.

"...the book is likely to still be protected as a compilation whenever the legislative changes come in to force, but it will not have any impact on copyright that has already expired, like that in Anne's diaries."

Not sure how that works, but as a signatory to the TPPA ("unwilling", some would say), Malaysians in the book and publishing industry might want to pay close attention to developments in the trade pact.

Elsewhere:

• Yang Jisheng, author of Tombstone, a book on China's Great Famine, has been barred from going to the US to accept award.
• Ramin Ganeshram, author of A Birthday Cake for George Washington, spoke up about the controversy surrounding the book. Many of the comments are disheartening; the critics don't seem to want to let go.
• Dream of the Red Chamber, China's greatest novel? Michael Wood, at The Guardian, thinks it's time Cao Xueqin's [紅樓夢] gets the attention it deserves.
• Google opens Editions at Play, an online store for "books that can't be printed". Sounds like Google is also trying to catalyse the creation of digital books, those that work - and make sense - only in cyberspace.
• "I don't think you're doing the artist or the audience or the art form itself any favor if you pat things on the head." In Salon, New York Times writer A.O. Scott speaks about "monsters of ego", criticism and "how Twitter makes his job more lively". Of course, Scott has a new book out, Better Living Through Criticism.
• Fifteen words invented by authors, according to the blog by the Oxford Online Dictionary. Some of these are surprising.
• Is the Malaysian Home Ministry and government going to appeal the lifting of ban on Irshad Manji’s book, Allah Liberty and Love? OH FOR GOODNESS'S SAKE TAK HABIS-HABIS CERITA NI SHOULD THIS EVEN BE PURSUED NOW?
• "Hindu nationalists are now demonstrating that there are many ways to assassinate a writer." Pankaj Mishra on the forces involved in Arundhati Roy's trial for "contempt of court", which he (or whoever wrote the standfirst) calls "a crime against art and thought".
• In The New Yorker, the story of New Directions, publisher of such titles as Eka Kurniawan's Beauty Is A Wound: "New Directions evolved as it did because its founder was as far-seeing in business as he was in matters of taste," writes Maria Bustillos. "[James] Laughlin wasn't looking to corner a market or to disrupt anything; his ambition was to create an institution that would last."
• Publisher's Weekly is covering the Havana Book Fair 2016 and the US publishing mission to Cuba, which PW co-organised with the American promotion and book marketing company, Combined Book Exhibit. Insights include a glimpse of the Cuban publishing industry.
• So, the presses for the UK's Independent and Independent on Sunday newspapers are stopping in March as the paper goes fully digital. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch's tweet about it was met with derision. But things aren't rosy at Murdoch's News Corp either.

Tranquility (And Other Deliciousness) In Petaling Jaya

I'd planned to have a shorter title and reveal the name of the place only at the very end. And someone pointed out that there's no clear indication that "Melody" and my makan kaki were one and the same - duly noted.

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The Augmented: Serving up tranquility (and other deliciousness) in Petaling Jaya

first published in The Malay Mail Online, 02 February 2016


Well-lit spaces. Soft music. A comfy chair. The promise of a good meal.

Lulled by the latter, I slumped further into my seat, melting into a mellow, contented blob. It'd been a long day, one of many, and the ambience hit the spot.

Months ago, Melody's little godbrother and his girlfriend brought Melody to this tiny place in SS2, Petaling Jaya. They were all blown away by its pasta dishes, and Melody became enamoured with something called a BCGT.

Tucked away from the main roads in SS2, The Augmented café is the
perfect spot to relax after a long day.

Last week, the makan kaki dragged me to an out-of-the-way bakery in Damansara Perdana, where this BCGT - a Belgian chocolate ganache tart - was made. For her, it had been a religious pilgrimage, after having stalked this bakery's social media feed for so long.

This evening, at this place, I experienced a bit of what she'd felt. Tucked away from the main roads in SS2, this café was how I'd imagine King Arthur's Avalon to be: bright, balmy, beatific, aired with angelic voices and soft lilting melodies.

At the back, a dining area and a reading nook, complete with bookshelves, a sofa and a cushioned, high-backed chair, added a homey albeit less Arthurian touch. Crowds, stay away.

The hearty Met Lambeef Pasta in creamy Lescure sauce. Don't let
the plating fool you - it can be filling.

Picking a dish to wind the day down with was hard, because the menu only sported less than 10 items, including several breakfasts and a few pasta dishes. I eventually settled on one, and earmarked another for my return.

Some time later, a savoury note perfumed the air in front of my nose, followed by the warmth and colours emanating from the plate on my table. There it was, my "Met Lambeef pasta" in Lescure cream sauce. I straightened up.

I loved how the sauce seasoned the chunks of lamb-and-beef mince so well, though it could use less salt. I wasn't prepared for the diced onions, which crackled as I chewed - was it part of the sauce or the meat?

The roasted garlic shiitake Poachero spaghetti (partaken during
another visit) is light on the gut and a delight to the taste buds

Despite the pasta being so rich and delicious, and me being famished, I slowed down. I had no other plans for the evening.

Of course, slices of BCGT were in the chilled display case, adorned with a coat of cocoa powder on top. Unfortunately, I'd already had a slice at the Damansara Perdana bakery; weeks would pass before I'd even think of another taste of what's just a wedge of smooth, rich chocolate. And it was too late for coffee.

Passing the time here at an empty table, however, seemed inappropriate. But my gut didn't fancy any more things with cream. Thank goodness for the banana and walnut slice, which the lady boss warmed up in a toaster oven. I believe it's the only cake here that's baked in-house.

Banana and walnut slice: eat one and gift your friends another.

Surprisingly crumbly. Subtly fragrant with banana. No discernible hunks of walnut anywhere.

Belly full, I melted back into my seat, swathed in contentment.

Dare I tell the makan kaki where I was now? If I did, I would risk a scolding for not bringing her here. "You've been here already!" I'd protest, which she would ignore.

And she did say she was unwell...

So I ordered another banana and walnut slice as a peace offering. She was in no condition to stomach anything rich and creamy, either.

When you're in SS2, Petaling Jaya, look out for this sign.
Step inside and get away from it all.

I informed the lady boss of my intentions with the bagged banana slice, triggering a flood of questions.

"Has she been here before? What's her name? Maybe she's one of our regulars. Can you describe her?"

When I did and no bells rang, she asked for my name. Caught off guard, I froze. Few café proprietors endeavour to learn about their clientele. I wasn't ready to open up, though, not this evening. It was late, and I had something to do.

I sped into the night with a slice of Avalon in a brown paper bag for Melody, hoping it would help get her back on her feet. As a fellow foodie, I know the agony of having your movements and diet limited by illness.

And there's so much she's missing out on.


The Augmented has changed hands and now serves cakes, pastries and beverages. Most of the food described here is no longer available.

---

The Augmented

149, Jalan SS 2/6
47300 Petaling Jaya

Mon-Wed, Sat-Sun: 11:30am-10pm
Fri: 2:30pm-10pm

Closed on Thursdays

+603-7865 0728

Facebook page: www.facebook.com/theaugmentedcafe

Book Marks: Buying Used Books, Geraldine Brooks

After news that used bookstores are making a comeback of sorts, the question of the ethics of buying used books popped up, since not a cent from such sales goes to the authors. This commentator sees no shame in that. To end this note, I'm pulling something Neil Gaiman said in that piece:

What’s important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read.

---

Pulitzer-winner [Geraldine] Brooks "has never written a bad book", Sian Cain boldly proclaims in The Guardian:

The most confounding thing about Geraldine Brooks’s writing is how consistently good it is ... every book is remarkable. Working as a journalist did not beat the poet out of her – Brooks’s fiction is frequently beautiful, poetic at times, packed full of sentences to relish aloud – a river of “water as unlike our clear fast-flowing freshets as a fat broody hen to a hummingbird” in March; the hero who “walked through the woods like a young Adam, naming creation” in Caleb’s Crossing.

Cain also suggested five of Brooks's books for beginners and doubters to start with. Incidentally, someone reviewed Brooks's Foreign Correspondence some time back and seemed impressed with it. Might be a while before I can give Brooks's books a shot, though.

---

Ten things about Marco Ferrarese, novelist (Nazi Goreng), travel writer (Banana Punk Rawk Trails) and musician, in The Malay Mail Online. Have a taste (emphases theirs):

As a child with a stammer problem, I was very lonely and got easily attracted to horror films. They helped me feed my anger. The covers of early Iron Maiden albums that arrived from England were horror, too. I loved how Eddie held that pickaxe on the cover of Killers. My parents hated it, of course, which was another great reason to go for it.

...English is my second language and requires more attention and editing, but I know that almost everything I write in English will get published. On the other hand, Italian is a much richer language, as we have adjectives, expressions and shades of meaning that you can’t recreate in English. But most of what I write in Italian remains unpublished, because there’s no interest nor money for writers in Italy.

Also:

• In a restructuring exercise, British education publisher Pearson plans to axe 4,000 jobs. The AFP report picked up by The Malaysian Insider states that "Pearson has been hit hard by a difficult education market in the United States, where fewer people are going to university, instead seeking to go straight into employment in a buoyant jobs market. It has also been impacted in the UK as high costs have seen fewer students take vocational courses."
• "...bookshops are portals ... a good bookshop shows us what we didn’t know we wanted." Bookseller and author Jen Campbell on the magic of bookstores and how important that magic is to children.
• The e-book industry is in a state of decline, apparently. I guess it's harder to treat more expensive and bulky paper books as throwaway items, unlike digital files, which you can hoard till kingdom come.
• Celebrated sci-fi author Zen Cho will be holding court in Kinokuniya KLCC on 13 February 2016, from 11am to noon. Drop by and say "hi". Maybe buy a book. And get your copy signed.
• Some weeks back, an online hailstorm erupted over a supposedly lewd passage in a school-syllabus novel, Pantai Kasih (Love Beach), said to be a sex scene. The novel is not about beaches but a private hospital for VVIPs. Khairul Nizam Bakeri, author and social media editor for ASTRO Awani, read the book first and here's what he found (in Malay). In short: not lewd.
• A Snow White book based on the Disney adaptation was removed from a school library in Qatar for its "indecent" illustrations. What, more "indecent" than the Gulf nations' poor record in its treatment of migrant labourers?

I've dropped the ball for a bit to write up my recent trip to Melaka with several others, which would turn out to be the longest writing project of my life so far at almost 10,000 words. A shame I didn't take enough good pictures for it.

Sugarcoating The Unpleasant

Ron Charles, editor of Washington Post's Book World, proclaimed that "There are no winners in this controversy over A Birthday Cake for George Washington".

This children's book features a chapter in the life of George Washington's slave, Hercules, who manages to bake Washington's birthday cake despite not having any sugar on hand. Critics are upset at the rosy portrayal of slavery and the slave-master relationship in this book, and Scholastic, the publisher, pulled it from shelves. It didn't matter that the author is not white or racist, or that they were apparently not doing what they were accused of. Slavery was horrible and must in no way be presented in a kindly light.

"While it is perfectly valid for critics to dispute a book's historical accuracy and literary merit, the appropriate response is not to withdraw the volume and deprive readers of a chance to evaluate the book and the controversy for themselves," according to a statement from the National Coalition Against Censorship and the PEN American Center.

Scholastic has responded to the criticisms, saying that they pulled the title because no, we were not browbeaten into it. It was because the title "did not meet our publishing standards."

On a somewhat related note, Kate Breslin's For Such a Time was also panned for using the Holocaust as a backdrop for a tale of romance (with Christian undertones) between a German SS officer and a Jewish woman.

I'm inclined to believe that this is just a couple of cases where two publications were shouted at without addressing the sources of the outrage. In the US, blacks in general are still treated as second-class citizens; and modern-day slavery in many parts of the world contributes much to our 21st-century lifestyle: in fashion, construction and gadgets, for instance. Bigotry is still rife in many societies, and not just towards Jews.

Reading these reports, we're not sure whether these critics have anything to say about forced labour, racism and anti-Semitism today. Maybe all that ended up on the cutting-room floor because of the media's supposed tendency to curate the news to suit certain agendas. So all we seem to get from these people are along the lines of "Nothing good happened during those times! Stop looking, and stop imagining!"

But who's to say that the above scenarios are implausible? Can a slave not be resourceful and proud of his work, even under oppression and inhumane treatment? Is it impossible for two people to have a romance, despite being on two sides of an unbridgeable ideological chasm?

For me, these small specks of brightness cast a light not on the already well-documented horrors of slavery or the Holocaust, but upon the humanity buried underneath the muck. Even in adversity, there is still a small part of us that strives to be the best we can be.

If we can't tell stories like this anymore, then what? The shouty types don't seem to have any other solution than "Don't write them". They appeal to their audiences with horrific images of "what really happened", burying any attempt by others to mess around with the official narrative, even in fiction.

I like the idea of a slave who, despite his circumstances, takes enough pride in himself and his job to find ways to solve a problem. He can think, strategise, improvise. He has potential - why not celebrate that?

And it's a children's book. The way the critics were howling you'd think they'd want the young 'uns aged two and up to be aware of just how nasty the practice of slavery is. Is that wise?

Besides: "It's possible, though not encouraged by our screaming online culture, to raise serious objections to this book without calling into question the motives or talents of the people involved," Ron Charles wrote in that WaPo article.

(This is why Charles is one of my favourite book people.)

Let little kids be themselves. Treat them with small slices of real life they can stomach and digest. They will grow up eventually, and when they finally have questions about what really went on as Hercules baked that birthday cake, that's when you know they're ready for the answers.

Books - and the Internet - aren't supposed to teach our children everything. That's our job. And maybe we shouldn't scream those lessons into them either.

This Could Be Purr-a, Purr-a, Purr-a-dise

"Okay, hold still," I told the subject of my smartphone camera photo shoot. The angle wasn't quite right and I was receiving no cooperation. "Aren't you a shy one," I noted with mild exasperation.

When it wasn't attempting to vanish, my subject refused to look at the lens, preferring to squirm or roll around - probably immediate priorities. After all, it wasn't human.

On a hunt for two bakeries: Bake Plan and Dotty's, I stumbled upon the Purradise Cat Café after finding Dotty's closed for the day; the doors are shut at 5pm. Needing a break, I climbed the stairs to the café on the first floor. No shoes are allowed after the foyer.

Purradise had, I thought, more felines than another similar establishment at SS15 in Subang Jaya. Seems all of them are rescued strays (one of them apparently just came in and stayed), and patrons are allowed to adopt any kitty they fancy. There must've been about twelve, and all of them are named.

For RM15, patrons get one drink and an hour in the café; an additional RM3 is charged for every 15 minutes afterwards. Anything else, including food and drink, is also extra. Wanna spend a full day there? It's RM39, plus a drink. The charges and time limits were imposed to keep the number of patrons low, I was told.

From their Facebook page:

Purradise Cat Café is a social enterprise with an aim to support and improve animal welfare and their holistic wellbeing. Our ultimate goal is to foster rescue cats and socialize them to a loving environment before finding them their furrever homes. Purradise Cat Café operates within a self-sustaining business model, where proceeds from the café will be reinvested into supporting pet fostering and re-homing initiatives.

Of course, being a cat person, I wasn't really into the hot chocolate I picked. All I cared about were all the furry four-legged critters that owned the place.

An atsroturfed part near the window was done up to look like a picnic spot, with tables and beanbags. The main area was split between a park and sitting area, with a huge table in between. Ledges, ramps and shelves allowed the cats to move and leap around as cats do.

Some of these ledges were made to look like clouds and hot air balloon baskets, so that the kitties can lounge or sleep on them, away from prying eyes. It is as cat-friendly a place as can be.

Here's a cat. I think its name is "Yuki". It's the only skinny-ish white cat with a collar.

Here's another cat. Methinks this be "Patches" in the foreground - also easy to ID, as it's the only cat with black and white patches. I'm not sure (and didn't bother to find out) who the other cat is.

Here's another cat. I gave up trying to ID individuals early on. They're all SQUEE.

And another cat.

And another. This one was perched on one of the narrow wooden planks that bridged one side of the café with the other.

A couple more.

More cats by the kitchen door. They know there's something nice behind it. Which is why they're not allowed inside.

The photo collage of the current residents didn't help. As far as I was concerned they were all "Cat". And it seems the collage wasn't up to date.

I hadn't planned on dropping by, so I didn't manhandle any of the cats. Not that I knew how. And I was drinking chocolate, which is, along with tea and coffee, lethal to cats and some animals. I didn't spill anything, but I wanted to be careful.

So, yes, my (okay) hot chocolate remained mostly ignored throughout my stay, as I stalked the resident cats making their rounds and naps around Purradise. The beverage didn't leave much of an impression. It came in a white takeaway sippy cup with a black cover and it was really HOT.

I was more impressed by the cats and how the place was done up to accommodate these cuddly killing machines. Left alone, cats can kill a lot of tiny animals. Don't just take The Oatmeal's word for it.

Speaking of which, the café has this.

Exploding Kittens is a card game The Oatmeal had a hand in making. This Kickstarter project exceeded the goal of US$10,000 in eight minutes and racked up over US$8.5 million in pledges by the end of the campaign.

No, I didn't try the game. Nobody to play it with.

I thought it was a nice touch.

I was also reluctant to leave. But it was dusk and I had to go home. Another day at work awaited. At least I was relaxed enough to go back on the road again.

Then I encountered a traffic jam and I wished I stayed back a while longer. It would've been worth the additional RM12.

Purradise is more of a petting zoo and chill-out place than a café, and that's fine. I was already sold on the idea after visiting the Subang cat café. This place also has a mission I'm all for.

When one can't be bothered with road trips outstation or local hotel-based mini-vacations, an afternoon with a dozen or so cats and a beverage and a snack in this corner of Taman Tun Dr Ismail is just as relaxing.

If you aren't allergic to or afraid of cats.

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Purradise Cat Café

1st Floor, No. 24A
Jalan Tun Mohd Fuad 2
Taman Tun Dr Ismail
60000 Kuala Lumpur

Tue-Fri: 2pm-10pm
Sat-Sun: 11am-11pm

Closed on Mondays

+603-2389 0976

Web site | Facebook page

Maudlin Monday

Yesterday, while my PC was booting up, it hung. It was around 9pm.

Not quite the way I wanted to wind down for the evening.

After several failed attempts at rebooting, I opened the casing of the CPU, wiped off a bit of dust - how does all that stuff find its way in? - and rebooted it again, sans a couple of USB extension cables.

Success - and out came the external hard drives.

This episode was significant because it finally drove home the realities of our flagging economy. This, along with the fact that I paid about RM12 more for a water filter element last weekend as opposed to last year.

This wasn't a good time for the PC to start failing. Things breaking down and requiring repair or replacement almost always happens when 1) I'm too busy; 2) I need to use the damn things at the moment; 3) the money needs to go somewhere else, or 4) I'm broke.

The renewed realisation of how much I'm dependent on these devices frightens me.
Not long ago, I was babysitting two of these: the desktop and a laptop computer. Now, it's the desktop and a smartphone, which I adopted nearly fourteen years since I bought my first mobile phone, a Nokia 3310 that only began showing its age middle of last year.

They just don't make 'em like that anymore. If these weren't meant to last you'd think they'd be a little cheaper.

So I guess this is a call to action. I've made several such calls for one reason or another (which were ignored for one reason or another) but I think This Is It.

Time to save - and bid a sad temporary farewell to some favourite haunts. Time to declutter all the junk in the PC and the apartment. Time to increase my net worth - #2kerja, here I come?

Maybe it's also time to take the computer to the shop, provided that the problem persists. I've asked around and concluded that it could be the CMOS battery, but it could also be the hard drive.

Of course, now I tend to be afraid to boot up the machine. So while it was working, I scheduled a blog post for tomorrow after backing up all the files. The post will have cats in it because I - as well as the rest of the Internet - need to feel better, probably after the news.

(It's been a while since I wrote things like this. Maybe because I didn't see the point of it.)

Book Marks: Wondermark, Missing Booksellers

How the heck I've lived without Wondermark? I learnt about this comic from sci-fi author John Scalzi (I think) who tweeted about the practice of sealioning by some Twitter users over Republican presidential nominee Ted Cruz (seriously?).

I've gone through the archives and found this (I think it's about people who want to write but don't get down to it) and this (I think it's about fairy tales, but I was wowed by the punch line).

So. Bookmarking. This.

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The mystery over some Hong Kong booksellers' disappearances deepens. Though there was talk that Chinese agents were responsible, one blogger (whose post I just linked, and who's talking about this more than I think he does - perhaps for good reason) thinks it might be a PR stunt by the publisher in question.

Thing is, the net effect of these alleged abductions is probably what China's government wanted to achieve. A chill seems to have descended upon the bookstores in Hong Kong. "Bookshops are removing political works from their shelves," goes the AFP report in The Malay Mail Online, "while publishers and store owners selling titles banned in mainland China say they now feel under threat."


Other stuff:

• The deputy PM wants Malaysia to take the Nobel Prize winner for literature by or around 2057. A commenter has issued a retort, pointing out - among other things - that the arts is still not seen as a viable (read: profitable) career choice in this country. I've nothing to add. Malas nak komen.
• So that guy's book, Mein Kampf, has entered public domain. So did Anne Frank's diary, by the way - an interesting parallel. I've made notes of Mein Kampf's impending entry into public domain, so I'll just leave this one here. I still think attempts to block its publication is futile, even more so now.
• No taboo should be off limits when writing for teenagers, says author Non Pratt. And here's Pratt sharing her "helpful" post on how she edits her work, which she wrote for the blog Author Allsorts.
• "It turns out that fantasy—the established domain of British children’s literature—is critical to childhood development." Why the British tell better children's stories.
• With the sale of Author Solutions, Penguin Random House exits self-publishing, sticks to "traditional publishing". Does that mean Amazon is now the dominant force in the multibillion-dollar self-publishing market?
• The Dag Hammarskjöld Library at the United Nations announced its most-checked-out publication of 2015: a volume (or, more accurately, a thesis) on how to avoid war crime charges (awkwaaaaard). Any bets this will also be a popular item this year?
• Used bookstores are, it seems, making a comeback. Many factors have been cited, but none that's probably more compelling "than the experience of browsing — getting lost in the stacks, making serendipitous finds, having chance conversations with interesting people. And with information so easy to find these days, used bookstores offer the thrill of the hunt." Coming back from the recent Big Bad Wolf Book Sale, I'm inclined to agree.
• There's a discussion on Quora about the absence of science fiction from Chinese culture. Quite a few good arguments. I'm more inclined to concur with the fact that the Chinese tend to look backward - towards history, mythology and maybe old wuxia (martial arts pugilist) novels - for anything related to the fantastical for inspiration. With such a huge trove going back centuries, why look forward?
  
  But I think such a tendency might hamper attempts to, say, visualise the future, or lead to oversaturation of related genres (look at the numerous adaptations of Jin Yong's and Gu Long's works).
• After 66 years, light is shed on "Francis Duncan", author of a Christmas murder mystery that's being reissued and getting critical acclaim.
• So, you want to work in publishing? Here's some advice from an editor at Chronicle Books. Quite a few salient points.

"Who's Bad?" In Jagat, It's Not Who You Think

first published in The Malay Mail Online, 05 January 2015


When the mostly good reviews trickled in, I held fast because this was the sort of film I dreaded. I've never been a cinema buff, and watching an upsetting film isn't how I would want to spend an afternoon.

In the end, my curiosity won out. I went to a cinema, plonked myself in front of a big screen on a public holiday, and learnt that my suspicions (and the rave reviews) about the film were right.

My interest about the locally-produced, mostly Tamil film Jagat was also stoked by how much it reminded me of other works that revolved around a similar premise: the plight of marginalised Malaysian Indians who were left to their own devices after being kicked out of the estates where they have lived and worked for generations.

Jagat (Tamil slang for "bad") zooms in on a particular family, and how circumstances can keep them trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty and crime. In spite of his creative talents and out-of-the-box thinking, young Shankar a.k.a. Appoy is seen as a disappointment by his father Maniam. Appoy's uncle, Dorai, joins a gang with a friend. Both are promised the keys to getting ahead: for Appoy, good grades in the exams; and for Dorai, a thug's life.

Ironically, for Appoy, the education system and family unit which is supposed to be his lifeline wears him down instead. He's given a bad grade for his short composition (Saya Sebatang Pensel — remember that one?), which his dad berates him for. Pencils do not fly in the real world, he is told.

Watching Appoy being broken down is painful. Like the powers that be hell-bent on putting him in his place, this bully of a film knows where it hurts and how to hurt you. Every few minutes, something shocking, angering or saddening sneaks up and punches you in the gut.

When Appoy poses in a workmanlike Michael Jackson get-up he made from bits and pieces scavenged from his neighbourhood for his class's fancy dress competition, we can't help but cheer. Who's bad? He is! Then his dad has a bad day at work and Appoy's efforts are wasted.

Sad thing is, though he's aware of the significance of education, Maniam would rather beat or scold this piece of wisdom into his son instead of explaining it to him (we're not sure if he's done the latter before) — which doesn't work.

Salting Appoy's wounds further is the bullying he receives from schoolmates and a teacher who is, despite what the community believes, far from divine. With his dreams and self-worth in tatters, the boy figures he has to be bad for real — like his gangster uncle (who does not approve) — to get any form of respect and validation.

The film is not short of bad guys, but it's easy to guess who the true villains are: the archaic and rigid education system, which has trouble with outliers like Appoy; the conservative attitudes in his community; racism ... the usual suspects. After all, haven't we lived with them for years?

Jagat reportedly took a decade to make, presumably due to the perfectionist streak in the writer and production crew — and all that work shows. It paints a realistic, albeit gloomy portrait of Indians in poverty — and the forces that conspire to keep them there. An amazing directorial debut by Shanjhey Kumar Perumal, who also wrote the screenplay.

Speaking to local daily The Sun, Shanjhey revealed that his background is similar to the young protagonist's. "When I was young, I wanted to be a scientist," he said. "When I became a teenager, I wanted to be a gangster instead, because I found that society seemed to have more respect for such people compared to educated people." Thank goodness he ditched that ambition.

He also hoped the film will help non-Indian Malaysians understand their Indian neighbours better. "I really believe our racial unity should be more than just eating each other's food. We should also try to understand each other's history and culture. One of the simplest ways to do that is through the arts."

Is it "simple", though? I can imagine how tough it must be to solicit funding, especially for gritty non-escapist features based on real-world problems with no apparent solution or end in sight.

And, sometimes, the message is lost on some. As I stumbled towards the exit with other moviegoers, I heard two of them loudly discussing (parts of) the experience, like Taylor Swift's appearance in one of the ads, and how one of the gangsters looked like a friend. One of them seemed have a problem with the fact that a "Datuk" (Datuk Seri A. Anandan) was the producer — not "indie" enough, perhaps?

I'd like to think that, by making Jagat, Shanjhey is encouraging the poorer kids from his former hood to aim for greater things, like becoming the scientist he never became, or a Nobel Prize-winning man of letters.

Someone who, I hope, can find a way to make pencils fly.


Jagat began screening at selected cinemas nationwide on December 17, 2015.

Also, tweaked this part for clarity.