Bakrid Greetings from Bobby George Abraham

Bobby George Abraham is a friend in the technical writing fraternity based in Trivandrum, Kerala. He is a god-loving (not god-fearing) Christian. As always, as it happens with Bottomline, the Bakrid issue went out without greetings (without the feature itself, in fact). This morning, however, I received Bakrid greetings from Bobby George Abraham. It did not matter that he was a Malayalee Christian and I was a Telugu Hindu. The festival stands for sacrifice, sharing, and charity.

Eid al-Adha (in Arabic) or Bakr Id (in India) is the "Festival of Sacrifice" which is an important religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Abraham (Ibrahim) to sacrifice his son Ishmael (Isma'il) as an act of obedience to God, before God intervened to provide him with a ram to sacrifice instead. The meat is divided into three parts to be distributed to others. The family retains one third of the share, another third is given to relatives, friends and neighbors, and the other third is given to the poor and needy.

Happy Id, Bobby George Abraham.

The Age of entertainment: Creators and consumers

In the age of entertainment, there will be two breeds of people: the creators, who design and produce objects of pleasure and leisure; and the consumers of the products designed by the creators. If you have to rank them, the consumers are the elite: they decide what is good and what is not. The designs created by the proletariat will get automatically produced and distributed by machines. There is no payment associated with the entire process. Everybody has their housing, food, transport and other needs covered. Status symbols such as a big car or a private pool will be eliminated. The rich and the poor dine at the same table.

Some creators have direct access to the entire consumer base; they are the super class among the creators. The other creators have to pass their designs through a corresponding super class of consumers. The consumer elite then forwards selected designs for mass productions. In any system, the guy who seeks approval is a supplicant: in the age of entertainment, the creators submit their work for approval. Of course, some of these creators – after many years of consistent work – get direct access to the entire consumer base, without ‘censors’. These creators are at the top of the heap in the age of entertainment.

By getting into the elite consumer class, you get the satisfaction of being in a position to decide what goes for mass production. The hoi polloi can ask for a particular design – and get a copy; but there will be no mass production without the approval of the elite consumer.

So also, the creators get the satisfaction of getting their work across to as many people as they can. The elite ‘proles’, those creators whose work goes for mass-production without censoring are the top of the pecking order; then come the elite consumers, although as the guys who decide what is good and what is bad, they have already approved some designers’ work as universally acceptable. So they have stepped to the number two slot. The next are regular creators, followed by mass consumers.

Has the time come for a change of guard in AP?

Speculation is rife that someone from Delhi will take over as the Chief Minister at the end of this week. In the Indian National Congress (INC), it is unusual for a minister or a Member of Parliament to be sent to the home state as CM. But we just had a deviation from that good tradition in Maharashtra. So also, people say that Mr S Jaipal Reddy. I beg to differ: Mr Jaipal Reddy is not a true-blue Congressman: he dallied with the Janata party and then the Janata Dal for quite some time. Mrs D Purandhareswari is required in Delhi.

It is going to be a local, very likely a Telangana woman. If Dr J Geetha Reddy is nominated, remember that you have read it in Bottomline – Trust News.