Nikhil Kulkarni

One of the trickiest and perhaps the toughest things to do, apart from deciding what to do when stuck in lift moving up and down many floors, is writing about yourself. At any point of time, you never really understand yourself completely. And even if you are under the false impression that you do, you are completely at loss for the right words. Right from filling up our Orkut and Facebook profiles (you know for what! *wink* *wink*), putting up your bio on Twitter to adding your Headline on LinkedIn, you are always left with a feeling that you haven’t put your best foot, rather your best words, forward.

You look around and realize why smart folks like Hutch are smart indeed. For About Me on his Orkut profile, Hutch writes –

“me” is a multi-lingual word.
How?
well for starters, it works as a pronoun in English,Telugu and Marathi…

Smart, isn’t it? This About Me entry can last his entire lifetime, or for as long as he retains his Orkut profile.

Then there are some very honest folks like Pole and Pong. On his Orkut profile, Pole says this about himself –

Truer words haven’t been said. Pong, on the other hand, is not only sure of how he was and how he is, but is also very confident of he will turn out to be. In his words –

i was,
am
and will always be

CRAP !

Knowing him, I can confidently say that he is on the right track. Rather, the right plane, considering how many air miles he is clocking these days. However, I haven’t checked his LinkedIn profile yet. I just want to make sure that he has the same description of himself there as well. Come on, if his friends and his personal network know how he is, shouldn’t his employers and professional network know as well?!

How I really wish Ayan were still blogging. There hasn’t been a better social behaviour analysis expert before and after Ayan. Don’t believe me? Read his post Wanna Fraandship in which analyzes the mind of a fraandship seeker on Orkut. Being strongly experienced himself, no wonder he has such wonderful insights. And what about Ayan’s About Me?

You can find that out by reading the other fields. For the moment, I’ll use this space to paste random thoughts :

“Do the brains of all land animals taste the same?”

Ayan will be the best person to tell you how human brains taste. Bahut sar khaaya hai is bande ne.

On a more serious note(*moves from a five rupee note to a ten rupee note*), I did what I do when I am totally clueless about something anything – turn to books. What do these authors, who write page loads about the characters they create or about the topics they know, write about themselves? When I come across a new book, more than the book cover or the blurbs, it is the author’s profile the author’s dedication that decide whether I’m buying the book or not. Also that section where they usually have a quote, a line from a movie, a poem before the chapters begin. (Does this section have a name?)

So I picked up some of my favourite books and looked at what the authors wrote about themselves. Here we go –

Chuck Palahniuk (From Fight Club)

About
Chuck Palahniuk’s eight novels are Diary, Lullaby, Fight Club, which was made into a movie by director David Fincher, Survivor, Invisible Monsters, Choke, Haunted and Rant. He is also the author of Fugitives and Refugees, a book about Portland, Oregon and the non-fiction collection Non-fiction. He lives in Washington State.

Dedication

For Carol Meader, who puts up with all my behaviour.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the following people for their love and support, despite, you know, all those terrible things that happen.

*-List of people follows-*

Douglas Coupland (from Generation X)

About
Douglas Coupland was born on a Canadian Armed Forces Base in Baden-Solingen, Germany, in 1961. Shortly afterwards he moved to Vancouver, where he still lives. He is the author of Miss Wyoming, Microserfs and Girlfriend in a Coma, among others. His books have been translated into twenty two languages.

‘Before The Book Begins’ Section
“Her hair was totally 1950s Indiana Woolworth perfume clerk. You know – sweet but dumb – she’ll marry her way out of the trailer park some day soon. But the dress was early ’60s Aeroflot stewardess – you know – that really sad blue the Russians used before they all started wanting to buy Sonys and having Guy Laroche design their Politburo caps. And such make up! Perfect ’70s Mary Quant with these little PVC floral applique earrings that looked like antiskid bathtub stickers from a gay Hollywood tub circa 1956. She really caught the sadness – she was the hippest person there. Totally.”
Tracey, 27

“They’re my children. Adults or not, I just can’t kick them out of the house. It would be cruel. And besides – they’re great cooks.”
Helen, 52

Jonathan Safran Foer (from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

About

Jonathan Safran Foer was born in 1977. He is the author of Everything Is Illuminated which won the National Jewish Book Award and the Guardian First Book Award, and the editor of A Convergence of Birds.

Dedication

For Nicole, my idea of beautiful.

Jonathan Franzen (From Freedom)

About
Jonathan Franzen won the National Book Award in 2001 for The Corrections. He is the author of two other critically acclaimed novels, The Twenty Seventh City and Strong Motion, and two works of non-fiction: How To Be Alone and The Discomfort Zone. He lives in New York City and Santa Cruz, California.

Dedication
To Susan Golomb and Jonathan Galassi

‘Before The Book Begins’ Section
Go together, You precious winners all; your exultation Partake to everyone. I an old turtle, Will wing me to some withered bough, and there My mate, that’s never to be found again, Lament till I am lost. – Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale

Nick Hornby (from How To Be Good)

About
Nick Horby was born in 1957. He is the author of Fever Pitch and of three novels: High Fidelity, About A Boy and How To Be Good. All four books have been international bestsellers and all are available in Penguin. He has also edited two anthologies, My Favourite Year and Speaking with the Angel. In 1999 he was awarded the E.M. Forester Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives and works in Highbury, north London.

Dedication
For Gill Hornby

Max Barry (From Jennifer Government)

About
Max Barry is an Australian who pretended to sell high-end computer systems for Hewlett-Packard while secretly writing his first novel. He lectured in Marketing at two universities, but came to his senses. Born March 18, 1973, he now lives in Melbourne, Australia with his wife and three million other people. Although only his wife lives in the same house. He writes full-time, the advantage of which being that he can do it wearing only boxing shorts.

Dedication

For Charles Thieson – Who really, really wanted me to call it ‘Capitalizm’

‘Before The Book Begins’ Section

With money we will get men, Caesar said, and with men we will get money. Thomas Jefferson, 1784 ..a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring men from one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement,and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. Thomas Jefferson, 1784

Well, the list of authors I like is quite long. See below, my author cloud from LibraryThing –

Covering all of them in this single blog post will make it really long. My dream is to one day write about the books that are important to me and their influence on me, like Nick Hornby’s 31 Songs. I want to do a similar book on the movies that have influenced me, one more on the songs that have influenced me, one more on the places that have influenced me and one more… ah, I’m booked already!

Anyway, what really led to me write this post and share about the Abouts of the authors is a book that I picked up recently – A Thing (or Two) About Curtis and Camilla by Nick Fowler from the roadside bookseller. When I read about the book now, it seems as if I should have picked it up long time back since it falls under the genre that I’m supposed to follow.

Anyway, what caught my attention was that the title A Thing (or two) about Curtis and Camilla had something written within brackets. Not only do I myself do this a lot, I have an affinity towards writers who do this.
You know what say about how great minds think, don’t you? And when I was going through the covers and the first few pages, I instantly decided to buy it when I saw the author’s bio. Here it goes –

Nick Fowler is a talented musician and magazine journalist who had written for GQ, Metal Edge, Teen Beat and other illustrious magazines. He has appeared on many television shows including The Tonight Show and The Sopranos. He grew up in Tallahassee, graduated from Corell University and now lives in New York with his dog, Monkey. This is his first novel. (Emphasis mine)

Everything else aside, I think it’d be great fun to read a book whose author has named his dog Monkey!

So, thank you Mr. Fowler for getting me back to blogging again. I hope I will enjoy reading your book.