Editorial

As a travel blogger and in some sense an amaetuer writer on internet, I have often wondered on how we can formalise the authorship process. Anyone can have a blog with any name. How do we authorise a certain piece by a certain person. In the old world, one can get a unique ISBN number for a book. Each book clearly mentions the details of the authors, there is a publisher to connect to and so on. Eveneven if you copy-paste Premchand’s work and put it up as your own and publish your own book, it is hard to get enough readership to sustain such an effort. Publishers of repute would ensure that it is your original work and your ‘Authorship’ gets formalised. This institutionalisation is something which I have seen missing on internet. And it is a paradox, a big paradox. It is a paradox because unlike printed work, everything is far more easily accessible and more importably, auditable. So a work of plagiarism is easy to catch. The great thing about internet is that it has made writing and publishing accessible to almost anyone, which is brilliant and needs celebration. If you work is good, it would travel. Now from the same premise, it should have been simple to institute a process around ‘Authorship’.

I have a feeling that people who are more connected to the world of writing, unlike me and some of my fellow writers at Ghumakkar, probably have some kind of ‘Author Authentication Directory’ or some such thing. There are many ways through which one can establish one’s identity on internet. An identity once created in the form of a profile, can then be blessed by the relevant community, in a way authentication it. Almost akin to the attestation process by a Gazetted officer serving for Government. If there are enough authentications, then that profile gets approved and sort of certified. Any work coming out of that profile, say a poem or a travel log, can then be attributed to that profile or that person. If you are using a pen name like mythical Silent Soul then your journey is a little longer where as if you are some one like dear Mukesh (with h) Bhalse with enough of personal photos of self and family then you get certified much faster. Phew, problem solved, at least on paper. Places like Ghumakkar should contribute towards this process and may be act as platforms, like signing authorities.

I am an year older and hopefully wiser when this digest goes for publication. But that is not a significant event in October. A little more scratching and you realise that the month almost starts with Gandhi’s birth anniversary. Someone who established ‘Non Violence’ as a primary and only weapon to fight for greater cause. He once said, “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind”. As you get old (and hopefully wiser) it becomes more important to introspect, to reflect and to course-correct. We also look back at our reasons behind Ghumakkar. Through travel, one gets exposed to things which are alien to him, whether it is as simple as what one eats to the greater realms of spiritualism. When one sees more of what one doesn’t know and follow, he slowly begins to accept the existence and more imporatntly starts appreciating the relevance of them. I am far more accepting to those scorpion, proudly displayed on wooden slates, ready to be consumed on my recent trip to Beijing then on my first trip and the constant feed of these small and little experiences gradually leads to greater tolerance. A tolerance towards something which is not you. Traveling builds tolerance and tolerance builds peace. QED.

And if this is making you jump off to other sections of this digest then let me dress this with something more appealing. Yeah, Okotber is a month of fest. The Dusshera and Durga Puja celebrations just finished, Bakra-Id followed soon after, Halloween is all around and we are all ganged up to make the most noise on Diwali. The card parties are in full swing, lights are out and the weather is at all time great. So one way or the other, October is a great begining and I prod you to make the most of it.

From then till now, DC has been entertaining us with some of her amazing travel experiences. Her photography skills are commendable and Ghumakkar has had the pleasure to see a few of her best shots. The smooth blend of the science involved in detailing and the art involved in expressing is prevalent in most of her posts. Ladies and gentlemen, with so much to admire , we surely have the onus on us to give this lady a great round of applause.
Please put your hands together for Devasmita Chakraverty , fondly known as DC, who is our Featured Author of the Month of October ‘2013.

pril 2013 was a great month for Ghumakkar.com. Let me share some statistics with you to quantify this. Between March 28 2013 and Apr 29, 2013, about 120,000 pages were read on Ghumakkar.com. So at some level, your stories touched all those who came here looking for info about a destination or advice on a particular route or just for reading pleasure. This is big and is about 8% more over the previous month. Thank you. I believe, it is the metric of making a valuable contribution towards the greater good of ‘Traveling’. To make it even more joyous, we crossed 50,000 user base on our Facebook page. Wow! So we urge you to spread the word whenever your story is published next. Your story needs to go everywhere and hopefully more people would get inspired to head-out and travel more.

Now, lets go back a little and look at the great travel stories of April 2013. Praveen Wadhwa took us on a long walk, from Nanaksar to Tanakpur to Lohaghat to the real unknown high-reaches of Dharchula, taking a detour or two to Nepal in the process. In between, educating us on various herbs and the daily struggle and wins of local folks. Vishal, who debuted recently continued to dazzle us by his amazing shots and narrative of his ‘Ride to Ladhak’. If you haven’t read this series then I would strongly suggest it. Rakesh Bawa’s romantic journey of Kashmir continues along side Nirdesh’s polite (yet firm) take on monuments in Delhi and around. Nirdesh is now becoming a historian’s favourite and on my occasional talks to other Authors, his name keeps popping up. And to balance the top-heavy (aka North heavy) line-up, Venkat’s Coorgi delights with mouth-watering holidays are a treat to cherish.