That they came home to place their request made me relent and I agreed to write three or four weekly essays for their Sunday edition.

Not to exceed 1000 words limit, I turned in my first essay of 980 words by Friday morning with an express rider to consult me for any editing, deletion and doubt before print. Had also shared few pictures.

Mum’s the word until the Sunday Dinamalar issue went to print.

Today morning after attending the 6 AM Ekantha Series by VSS foundation (Kudos VVS Murari!) chamber type concert at Mylapore Sundaresan Street, I checked. Both the internet version (without my name, thankfully) and the print version of the newspaper (with my name, unfortunately) had appeared carrying my essay.

Good lord!

Beginning with the substitution for the Tamil word for begin (thuvakkam instead of my thodakkam!) the essay was mangled, expurgated, bowdlerized and cast apart; so much so that my copious praise for Prasanna Venkatraman got so reduced that it is now left only as a criticism, while my criticism of Adityanarayanan was again reduced to transform into a praise. It went on this way, a hack job that managed to use every editorial procedure in the wrong way; reduction without context to change the original meaning, adding from one review lines into the other, obviously to again change the meaning of the context and review, unnecessarily providing an answer line (not written by me) to my rhetorical question, that too with an incorrect answer to boot, changing the location of the concerts (while the correct ones were provided in my essay), making the wrong ‘white-men’ sit beside me in the wrong concert, while killing off the ‘white crow’ that gave me company in the nagaswaram concert… are these editors this humour-impaired? How much one could rant? As long as my 1000 words essay?

Here is the picture of the Dinamalar ‘kothu parotta’ print version of my essay that had appeared today.

The Tamil version I had sent to them is here. I shall post an English version soon for the rasikas and readers enjoyment. You may compare at your leisure to concur.

I apologise to the artists and rasikas for the goof-up that no one could now be identified as the source. Do read the Tamil version (and the English one when I post it) and you may hold me responsible for the mistakes and criticisms I made therein. As usual, you may contact by email and I shall respond.

Waking up by 4:30 am in the morning to prepare for attending the concerts by 6 am and returning by 9:30 pm after managing to listen to six or seven per day, throughout the week, and writing through the night and chiseling the content for facts and excellence… why bother? What else I could expect from Dinamalar who prints IIT as ITI in their news heading?

While English newspapers are of one snooty kind, these Tamil newspapers and their irresponsible negligence has remained as always.

Haven’t you got paid? Just blow the trumpet and move on; if that’s your word of solace, no Sir, I haven’t taken money for any of my Tamil writings so far, including all my books.

So what’s the big deal? Daily hundreds of innocents get killed unjustifiably, is your grouse such an ordeal? No, of course not. When your child dies before your eyes, is there solace? (Sorry, that is my frustration. No one who reads need to face such a situation in their life.)

Arunn Narasimhan